RESISTANCE TO DRONE WARFARE: MOBILIZING AGAINST DRONES AND ENDLESS WAR.

Everything you ever wanted to know about drone warfare but were afraid to ask.As the Pentagon and CIA continue to wage endless war, the use of unmanned planes forreconnaissance and missile attacks are increasingly the vehicle of choice. Since these drone attacks and targeted assassinations result in no American casualties, in the short term they lesson public outcry to our failed foreign policies. In the long run, because of high civilian casualties, they create more enemies and ultimately a more insecure world, as drone technology is being propogated around the world without serious oversight into the ethical ramifications.

- Find out about the current status of ACLU lawsuits on U.S. drone warfare, - Learn the latest about drone technology and why we need to halt it in it's tracks.- Discover all the many ways drone technology is an attack on our very freedoms.- Hear report back from recent CodePink trips to Creech and Beale Airforce Bases and the Creech 14 Trial.- Find out about the growing collaborative drone resistance and anti-militarism campaign and be inspired to join us soon at a military base near you! Monthly Beale vigils/protest already in progress: Dec. 29, Jan. 18.

Singer/songwriter Betsy Rose will lead us with inspirational singing throughout the evening. Learn the latest drone resistance songs and sing some of our old time favorites.

Speakers to include:

Michael Thurman, IVAW member and ex-military who was stationed at Beale AFB, the northern California control center for the main intelligence gathering drone, the Global Hawk. Michael will give us a perspective from an insider's experience.

Cindy Sheehan, Peace activist and mother of Casey Sheehan, who was killed in the Iraq War. Cindy has been outspoken and active in the citizen resistance to drone warfare. Cindy will discuss the need for collaboration in the peace movement tobuild organized, ongoing, sustained protests at military bases to encourage war resistance and to halt drone warfare.

Dec. 29th: Beale AFB, 2nd monthly action, Theme: Free Bradley Manning Now:Flyers will be offered to the military as they enter and exit the base, educating them about Bradley Manning's illegal detention and inhumane treatment.

Jan. 18th: Beale AFB, 3rd monthly action, Contact us for details.

Jan. 23-27th: CodePink Caravan to Creech AFB: Support Creech 14 Trial and daily am and pm Creech AFB actions to Ground the Drones Now. Creech AFB is a main drone control center that controls the Predator and Reaper, the attack drones that fire the Hellfire missle that leads to high civilian deaths. (One hour north of Las Vegas)

TWO PLAYS: Wallace Shawn's, "The Fever" and Howard Zinn's, "Marx in Soho."

We are pleased to present both, Wallace Shawn's, "The Fever" and Howard Zinn's, "Marx in Soho." The two plays are complementary. "The Fever" is a raw portrayal of a person who is coming to social consciousness. "Marx in Soho" humanizes the man whose ideas describe these fundamental realities of our societies' social structure.

Two benefit performances by veteran actor and sociologist, Jerry Levy. LevyArts' mission is to utilize theater and social theory to entertain, enlighten and stimulate a constructive and reflective dialogue about society.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 7:00 P.M. "THE FEVER," a one-man play by Wallace Shawn

Wallace Shawn's play, "The Fever" explores what a sensitive, well educated, arts loving and consumption-driven man or woman of any age discovers when his/her life-affirming existence is related to the often brutal suffering of others. In the bathroom of a hotel our "anti-hero" feverishly defends and relentlessly attacks his own way of life. Inner voices and imagined characters fuel his fever as he narrates and often attempts to enact his story.

Actor Jerry Levy rehearses "The Fever," a one-man play which was be presented Dec. 4 and 10-12 at the Hooker-Dunham Theater in Brattleboro. (Jon Potter/Reformer) http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_16720592

SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1:30 P.M. "MARX IN SOHO," a one-man play by Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn's play, "Marx in Soho" portrays the return of Karl Marx. Embedded in some secular afterlife where intellectuals, artists, and radicals are sent, Marx is given permission by the administrative committee to return to Soho London to have his say. But through a bureaucratic mix-up, he winds up in SOHO in New York. From there the audience is given a rare glimpse of a Marx seldom talked about; Marx the man. The play offers an entertaining and thorough introduction to a person who knows little about Marx's life, while also offering valuable insight to students of his ideas.

A tale of two demos - demonstrate in London OR Manchester, 29 January!By EdDecember 20, 2010 http://anticuts.com/2010/12/20/a-two-of-two-demos-demonstrate-in-london-or-manchester-29-january/

There has been some confusion in the student movement recently about the date 29 January. NCAFC is backing and helping to organise two mass student demonstrations againt fees and cuts, one in London and one in Manchester. Here we explain why and advise activists on what to do on the day.

We are organising a demonstration in London for obvious reasons - because London is not only the biggest city and easily accessible, but the seat of political power. The Facebook event for this demo, which has already attracted 2,700 attendees and seen nearly 20,000 more invited so far, is here. This demo has also won support from many trade unionists including the leaders of Unite and the GMB (see here).

We are also mobilising students for Manchester, because that day the Young Members Network of the civil service union PCS, UCU and others are holding a young workers' march to the TUC's youth rally. (This is not an official Facebook group, but it's the only we can find so far. We'll update asap.)

More details of both, plus promotional materials, very soon.

Why it's right to demonstrate in London as well as Manchester

We are mobilising students for Manchester to make it clear we don't want to clash with the PCS Young Members march - indeed we want to protest alongside and in solidarity with it. However, we reject the idea, put forward for instance by the leadership of NUS (see Aaron Porter's letter to student unions and motion for the January 10 NUS executive meeting below) that it is wrong to protest in London on 29 January.

The Manchester event was not widely known about in the student movement until now; and to be bluntly honest, it was never going to be the case that thousands of students from London and the South attended it. Nor was there any sign of NUS seriously trying to mobilise for Manchester! Meanwhile, the student struggle against fees and cuts goes on, and another mass demonstration in London is urgently needed. Aaron Porter and the leadership of NUS are using the Manchester march as an excuse, covering for the fact that they wanted 10 November to be the end of the campaign and wish students were not pushing for more action. We call on NUS to drop this ridiculous, opportunistic stance and officially support the London protest.

We want fraternal links between the two demonstrations, in London and Manchester; they should exchange speakers (we invite PCS Young Members to send a speaker to London) and, if possible, link up by video. Local student activist groups will have to decide which demo, Manchester or London, they want to take part in; we urge those nearer Manchester, to go to Manchester.

National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts

***

Letter from Aaron Porter to student unions

Dear all,

Last week I promised to write to you before Christmas setting out my thoughts on our next steps in the Education Funding campaign after what has been the most high profile campaign run by NUS in many decades. The defeat on the fee cap last week was painful- but I am immensely proud of the fight we put up, the attention we drew to the issue, the way in which we mobilised record numbers of students, the extent to which we shaped the debate and the way in which it has affected the coalition. Right now we all need a short break to recuperate - but in January we'll need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and get on with doing the very best we can for our members, as the campaign still goes on!

There is much to fight for in the new year. A white paper is being developed that will set out a new framework for regulation and accountability in Higher Education- and we must ensure that we are at the heart of that by winning new rights for students and their unions. The Government will set out the basis on which universities can charge over the basic £6k fee- and we'll be pushing to test the Government's assertion that charging over £6k will be "exceptional". The new HE scholarship scheme is being developed, the EMA continues to be hotly debated, AimHigher needs saving, local authorities are about to slash young people's travel subsidies and there are still huge cuts coming to provision in both FE and HE that need to be resisted. Many of these challenges involve decisions that will be made locally and I know you will expect maximum targeted support on a local scale as well as continued national action.

This is why in the motion to an NEC meeting I have called for January, I have set out clear and proactive steps for NUS to continue to seize the initiative in what is an ongoing campaign across HE and FE:

Joint action with Trade Unions and UCU on the 29th January, high level support for SUs in FE and HE facing local course cuts and closures, prioritisation of the campaign to save EMA and the AimHigher programme, a full inquiry into policing tactics on the recent student protests, full-scale mobilisation for the TUC National Demonstration on the 26th March and a long term strategy to reverse the damaging marketisation and reduction of public investment in our education system.

The TUC have asked NUS and UCU to support a mass protest and rally in Manchester (29th January) to highlight youth issues, including access to education, the scrapping of EMA and youth unemployment. Manchester of course has both the largest FE College and HE institution in the country and sits in a region with the highest rate of youth unemployment in the country. As a national organisation I believe it is the right decision for us to ensure that not all our activity is based in London, therefore a national action in a region with such high levels of youth unemployment, jointly alongside the TUC and UCU is another reason for us to support this tactic, at this time. The event has had the longstanding date of 29 January, and I have agreed to join Trade Union leaders to speak on behalf of NUS.

It is therefore unhelpful that the "National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts", alongside the "Education Activists Network", have suggested a further National Demonstration on January 29th in London, when an event with the TUC and UCU has been longstanding. As I make clear below, a mass demonstration on Fees, EMAs and Cuts on the 10th November in conjunction with UCU was the right tactic at the right time. A further national demonstration on Fees, EMAs and Cuts on the 29th January in London when the TUC have organised an event in Manchester on the same day, would be the wrong tactic at the wrong time - especially when we need maximum unity with the Trade Union Movement, and moves to divide the student movement when we need maximum unity is not a direction of travel I support.

More importantly, the student movement must not respond to the defeat on Fees by coming to the lazy conclusion that a series of hastily organised National Demos will secure wins for students. This kind of tactical obsession is the wrong response to the challenges we face. I believe that our mobilisation for a mass protest and rally in Manchester on the 29th January, and then mobilisation again for the TUC National Demonstration on the 26th March is the right tactic, alongside engaging with ongoing policy issues with regard to access, EMA, cuts and so much more as the debate continues on.

To ensure we respond to these challenges with speed, early in the new year I have called a meeting of our National Executive Council of NUS, which will rightly have the opportunity to debate the next steps for the campaign. I will be asking the NEC to support the motion below, which I believe sets out the right campaign tactics for the months ahead.

For maximum openness, I have published below the main motion that I will submit to the NEC. I believe it sets out a clear programme of action and activity for the new year which deploys the right tactics, at the right time, in partnership with UCU and the Trade Union Movement.

I will of course be in touch early in the new year with the results of that meeting.

I want to finish off by saying a heartfelt thank you for everything this year. Whilst the result of the vote was incredibly disappointing, we have still run the most high-profile NUS campaign in decades. There is still so much more to campaign for, and that's what we need to focus on in 2011.

Wishing you a peaceful and happy Christmas, and a prosperous 2011,

Aaron

Main Motion to Emergency NECMonday 10th January 2011

NEC Believes

1. Both houses of parliament have now approved a £9,000 limit on Higher Education Undergraduate Tuition Fees.2. This happened despite an unprecedented mass campaign from NUS that has united students, lecturers and the general public and the largest student demonstration in a generation.3. The student movement should be proud that the NUS/UCU National Demonstration on 10 November sparked an unprecedented wave of student activism.4. The policing of both the NUS/UCU Demonstration and subsequent demonstrations has been widely questioned.5. It has been widely reported that some on those demonstrations were bent on violence.6. The changes to fees levels have to be seen in the wider context of savage cuts to education and public services.7. The TUC have asked NUS and UCU to help build for a wider Rally on youth opportunities in Manchester on the 29th January.8. The NCAFC/EAN have suggested that NUS hold a National Demonstration in London on 29th January9. Cuts programmes inside HEIs continue and will only get worse in the new year.10. A significant number of new student activists have emerged out of the campaign.11. The removal of the EMA will devastate retention and achievement in FE and destroy access to universities by the poorest.12. Aim Higher has been mooted to close.13. A white paper on fees is due out in the new year.

NEC Further Believes

1. Our principal duty is to work to secure our members' interests.2. Our struggle on cuts to education and public services must now be bound up firmly with the wider trade union and social movement.3. The prospect of £9,000 fees heightens and makes more urgent the need to radically improve student rights on campus and the regulation of HEIs.4. Students' unions need real, substantial help now on understanding and fighting cuts in their institution.5. A mass demonstration on Fees, EMAs and Cuts on the 10th November was the right tactic at the right time. A further national demonstration in London on Fees, EMAs and Cuts on the 29th January would be the wrong tactic at the wrong time.6. The TUC protest and rally on 29th Jan will be held in Manchester- home to the largest FE College and HE institution in the country and sits in a region with the highest rate of youth unemployment in the country.7. Some of the actions of some on demonstrations and in occupations have harmed, not progressed, our cause. Violent demonstrators have lost us considerable public support.8. Some of the policing tactics in use at student demos in November and December exacerbated tension and violence and prevented peaceful students from demonstrating.9. At a time when there is still so much to campaign for, there has never been a more important time for maximum unity, and not doing so is unhelpful and damaging to students.10. Students in FE face a double whammy- 16-18 transport subsidies are to be cut in local authorities and learner support funds don't support travel costs.

NEC Resolves

1. To support the TUC protest and rally for youth opportunities on January 29th in Manchester.2. Continuing to work with UCU and other trade unions through the TUC is vital to ensure we are part of a wider campaign.3. To reject calls from the NCAFC/EAN to hold a London based National Demo on January 29th.4. To prioritise mobilisation amongst students for the 26th March TUC national demonstration in the first term.5. To launch a local mobilisation and partnership strategy with trade unions and social groups aimed at developing activism over cuts in local constituencies.6. To mandate the VP Higher Education to launch an anti cuts strategy with a detailed toolkit and advice available from NUS staff and officers.7. To support the VP Furhter Education in continued prioritisation of the campaign to save EMA, cuts to FE and the fight for local travel subsidies for young people.8. To call for a detailed enquiry must be held into Policing tactics used on demonstrations in November/December.9. To continue to publically condemn inappropriate police tactics like kettling (containment) and horse charging.10. To lobby for increased student rights and protections in the White Paper.11. To push the Government to ensure that there is a more comprehensive system of student support, effective outreach given the new fee regime.12. To continue to fight to save the EMA and to lobby to ensure that colleges are able to assist students with transport costs in the future.13. To launch a major campaign aimed at protecting Aim Higher and ensuring that efforts to improve WP measure universities' success at retention and acceptances rather than just applications.14. To develop a detailed long term strategy aimed at reversing the damaging marketisation and loss of public funding about to be inflicted on HE.

The first organizing meeting for the SF March 19 march and rally will be on Sunday, Jan. 16 at 2pm at the Local 2 union hall, 209 Golden Gate Ave.[See call for March 19 immediately below...bw]A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/ info@AnswerCoalition.org National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488

Saturday, March 19, 2011:Day of Action to Resist the War Machine!8th anniversary of the invasion of IraqScores of organizations coming together for worldwide protests

In San Francisco, the theme of the March 19 march and rally will be "No to War & Colonial Occupation - Fund Jobs, Healthcare & Education - Solidarity with SF Hotel Workers!" 12,000 SF hotel workers, members of UNITE-HERE Local 2, have been fighting for a new contract that protects their healthcare, wages and working conditions. The SF action will include a march to boycotted hotels in solidarity with the Lo. 2 workers. The first organizing meeting for the SF March 19 march and rally will be on Sunday, Jan. 16 at 2pm at the Local 2 union hall, 209 Golden Gate Ave.

In Los Angeles, the March 19 rally and march will gather at 12 noon at Hollywood and Vine.

March 19 is the 8th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq today remains occupied by 50,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries.

The war in Afghanistan is raging. The U.S. is invading and bombing Pakistan. The U.S. is financing endless atrocities against the people of Palestine, relentlessly threatening Iran and bringing Korea to the brink of a new war.

While the United States will spend $1 trillion for war, occupation and weapons in 2011, 30 million people in the United States remain unemployed or severely underemployed, and cuts in education, housing and healthcare are imposing a huge toll on the people.

Actions of civil resistance are spreading.

On Dec. 16, 2010, a veterans-led civil resistance at the White House played an important role in bringing the anti-war movement from protest to resistance. Enduring hours of heavy snow, 131 veterans and other anti-war activists lined the White House fence and were arrested. Some of those arrested will be going to trial, which will be scheduled soon in Washington, D.C.

Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.

Protest and resistance actions will take place in cities and towns across the United States. Scores of organizations are coming together. Demonstrations are scheduled for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and more.

Click this link to endorse the March 19, 2011, Call to Action:http://www2.answercoalition.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=8062&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS

THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that wage war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our democratic rights and liberties.

WHO ARE THE PEACEMAKERS?

WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healthy planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and civil liberties for all.

The Warmakers spend trillions of dollars yearly on endless wars in pursuit of global domination and profit while murdering millions of innocent people, installing corrupt and hated governments and funding occupations that displace millions from their homelands - trampling on the right of oppressed people to self-determination.

THEY send our youth - victims of the economic draft - to fight over the very fossil fuels whose unrestrained use threatens the future of the planet while corrupt and virtually unregulated oil giants dump billions of gallons of death into our rivers and oceans.

THEY wage a fake "war on terrorism" at home - the new McCarthyism - that promotes racism and Islamophobia aimed at destroying civil liberties and democratic rights.

THEY grant repeated and untold trillions in bailouts to banks, corporations and financial institutions while breaking unions, robbing pensions, destroying jobs, foreclosing homes, de-funding education and vital social services and are once again threatening Social Security and Medicare.

THEY offer no solutions to the current crises other than more of the same.

THE PEACEMAKERS DEMAND a better world. Only a massive, united, inclusive and independent movement has the power to bring it into being.

WE DEMAND Bring U.S. Troops, Mercenaries and War Contractors Home Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!

WE DEMAND trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.

WE DEMAND an end to FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish WikiLeaks and its contributors and founders.

WE DEMAND the immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads.

WE ARE DEDICATED TO A WORLD

OF PEACE AND JUSTICE.

All Out April 9, 2011

To add your group's name to the endorser list, local, state or national, please contact:

United National Antiwar CommitteeP.O. Box 123 Delmar, New York 12054518-227-6947 UNACpeace.org unacpeace@gmail.com

_______ My organization endorses the April 9 National Call to Action.

Name of Organization: __________________________________________________

_______ List me and my organization with an asterisk for identification only.

email you endorsement to:

jmackler@lmi.net and cc: unacpeace@gmail.com

Initial List of Endorsers (List in formation)* = For Identification only

These videos refer to what happened at the G-20 Summit in Toronto June 26-27 of this year. The importance of this is that police were caught on tape and later confirmed that they sent police into the demonstration dressed as "rioting" protesters. One cop was caught with a large rock in his hand. Clearly, this is proof of police acting as agent provocatours. And we should expect this to continue and escalate. That's why everyone should be aware of these facts...bw

police accused of attempting to incite violence at G20 summProtestors at Montebello are accusing police of trying to incite violence. Video on YouTube shows union officials confronting three men that were police officers dressing up as demonstrators. The union is demanding to know if the Prime Minister's Office was involved in trying to discredit the demonstrators.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbgnyUCC7M

The Wars in "Vietnamistan!" (The name Daniel Ellsberg gave to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as quoted from the video...bw)Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOde31QYbI0&feature=player_embedded

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John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism, Secrecy December 15, 2010http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzaclKj2B8M

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An Irishman abroad tells it like it is !! :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koY6kXhQDQo&feature=player_embedded

Posted: December 12, 2010 by Davey D in 2010 Daily News, Political articles

On Thursday morning, December 9, 2010, thousands of Georgia prisoners refused to work, stopped all other activities and locked down in their cells in a peaceful protest for their human rights. The December 9 Strike became the biggest prisoner protest in the history of the United States. Thousands of men, from Augusta, Baldwin, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Smith and Telfair State Prisons, among others, initiated this strike to press the Georgia Department of Corrections ("DOC") to stop treating them like animals and slaves and institute programs that address their basic human rights. They set forth the following demands:

Despite that the prisoners' protest remained non-violent, the DOC violently attempted to force the men back to work-claiming it was "lawful" to order prisoners to work without pay, in defiance of the 13th Amendment's abolition of slavery. In Augusta State Prison, six or seven inmates were brutally ripped from their cells by CERT Team guards and beaten, resulting in broken ribs for several men, one man beaten beyond recognition. This brutality continues there. At Telfair, the Tactical Squad trashed all the property in inmate cells. At Macon State, the Tactical Squad has menaced the men for two days, removing some to the "hole," and the warden ordered the heat and hot water turned off. Still, today, men at Macon, Smith, Augusta, Hays and Telfair State Prisons say they are committed to continuing the strike. Inmate leaders, representing blacks, Hispanics, whites, Muslims, Rastafarians, Christians, have stated the men will stay down until their demands are addressed, one issuing this statement:

"...Brothers, we have accomplished a major step in our struggle...We must continue what we have started...The only way to achieve our goals is to continue with our peaceful sit-down...I ask each and every one of my Brothers in this struggle to continue the fight. ON MONDAY MORNING, WHEN THE DOORS OPEN, CLOSE THEM. DO NOT GO TO WORK. They cannot do anything to us that they haven't already done at one time or another. Brothers, DON'T GIVE UP NOW. Make them come to the table. Be strong. DO NOT MAKE MONEY FOR THE STATE THAT THEY IN TURN USE TO KEEP US AS SLAVES...."

When the strike began, prisoner leaders issued the following call: "No more slavery. Injustice in one place is injustice to all. Inform your family to support our cause. Lock down for liberty!"

We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.

Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....

ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE

An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......

At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:

HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!

Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange

Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.

Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.

Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/

Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too. Especially here . . .

To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.

2. Visiting is very liberal but first I have to get people on my visiting list Wait til I or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.

3. One hour time difference

4. Commissary Money is always welcome It is how I pay for the phone and for email. Also need it for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing , ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons , 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated ? Of course, it's the BOP !)

5. Food is vastly improved. Just had Sunday Brunch real scrambled eggs, PORK sausage, Baked or home fried potatoes, Butter(sweet whipped M'God !!) Grapefruit juice Toast , orange. I will probably regain the weight I lost at MCC! Weighing against that is the fact that to eat we need to walk to another building (about at far as from my house to the F Train) Also included is 3 flights of stairs up and down. May try to get an elevator pass and try NOT to use it.

6. In a room with 4 bunks(small) about two tiers of rooms with same with "atrium" in middle with tv sets and tables and chairs. Estimate about 500 on Unit 2N and there are 4 units. Population Black, Mexicano and other spanish speaking (all of whom iron their underwear, Marta), White, Native Americans (few), no orientals or foreign speaking caucasians--lots are doing long bits, victims of drugs (meth etc) and boyfriends. We wear army style (khaki) pants with pockets tee shirts and dress shirts long sleeved and short sleeved. When one of the women heard that I hadn't ironed in 40 years, they offered to do the shirts for me. (This is typical of the help I get--escorted to meals and every other protection, explanations, supplies, etc. Mostly from white women.) One drawback is not having a bathroom in the room---have to go about 75 yards at all hours of the day and night --clean though.

7. Final Note--the sunsets and sunrises are gorgeous, the place is very open and outdoors there are pecan trees and birds galore (I need books for trees and birds (west) The full moon last night gladdened my heart as I realized it was shining on all of you I hold dear.

The Marine Brig at Quantico, Virginia is using "injury prevention" as a vehicle to inflict extreme pre-trial punishment on accused Wikileaks whistleblower Army PFC Bradley Manning (photo right). These "maximum conditions" are not unheard-of during an inmate's first week at a military confinement facility, but when applied continuously for months and with no end in sight they amount to a form of torture. Bradley, who just turned 23-years-old last week, has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest in late May. We're now turning to Bradley's supporters worldwide to directly protest, and help bring a halt to, the extremely punitive conditions of Bradley's pre-trial detention.

We need your help in pressing the following demands:

End the inhumane, degrading conditions of pre-trial confinement and respect Bradley's human rights. Specifically, lift the "Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order". This would allow Bradley meaningful physical exercise, uninterrupted sleep during the night, and a release from isolation. We are not asking for "special treatment". In fact, we are demanding an immediate end to the special treatment.

In the wake of an investigative report last week by Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com giving evidence that Bradley Manning was subject to "detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries", Bradley's attorney, David Coombs, published an article at his website on Saturday entitled "A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning". Mr. Coombs details the maximum custody conditions that Bradley is subject to at the Quantico Confinement Facility and highlights an additional set of restrictions imposed upon him under a Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order.

Usually enforced only through a detainee's first week at a confinement facility, or in cases of violent and/or suicidal inmates, the standing POI order has severely limited Manning's access to exercise, daylight and human contact for the past five months. The military's own psychologists assigned to Quantico have recommended that the POI order and the extra restrictions imposed on Bradley be lifted.

Despite not having been convicted of any crime or even yet formally indicted, the confinement regime Bradley lives under includes pronounced social isolation and a complete lack of opportunities for meaningful exercise. Additionally, Bradley's sleep is regularly interrupted. Coombs writes: "The guards are required to check on Manning every five minutes [...] At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay."

Denver Nicks writes in The Daily Beast that "[Bradley Manning's] attorney [...] says the extended isolation - now more than seven months of solitary confinement - is weighing on his client's psyche. [...] Both Coombs and Manning's psychologist, Coombs says, are sure Manning is mentally healthy, that there is no evidence he's a threat to himself, and shouldn't be held in such severe conditions under the artifice of his own protection."

In an article to be published at Firedoglake.com later today, David House, a friend of Bradley's who visits him regularly at Quantico, says that Bradley "has not been outside or into the brig yard for either recreation or exercise in four full weeks. He related that visits to the outdoors have been infrequent and sporadic for the past several months."

In an average military court martial situation, a defense attorney would be able to bring these issues of pre-trial punishment to the military judge assigned to the case (known as an Article 13 hearing). However, the military is unlikely to assign a judge to Bradley's case until the pre-trial Article 32 hearing is held (similar to an arraignment in civilian court), and that is not expected until February, March, or later-followed by the actual court martial trial months after that. In short, you are Bradley's best and most immediate hope.

What can you do?

Contact the Marine Corps officers above and respectfully, but firmly, ask that they lift the extreme pre-trial confinement conditions against Army PFC Bradley Manning.Forward this urgent appeal for action widely.Sign the "Stand with Brad" public petition and letter campaign at www.standwithbrad.org - Sign online, and we'll mail out two letters on your behalf to Army officials.

The United National Antiwar Committee urges the antiwar movement to begin to plan now for Emergency 5pm Day-of or Day-after demonstrations, should fighting break out on the Korean Peninsula or its surrounding waters.

As in past war crisis and U.S. attacks we propose:NYC -- Times Square, Washington, D.C. -- the White HouseIn Many Cities - Federal Buildings

Many tens of thousands of U.S., Japanese and South Korean troops are mobilized on land and on hundreds of warships and aircraft carriers. The danger of a general war in Asia is acute.

China and Russia have made it clear that the scheduled military maneuvers and live-fire war "exercises" from an island right off the coast of north Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) by South Korea are very dangerous. The DPRK has made it clear that they consider these live-fire war exercises to be an act of war and they will again respond if they are again fired on.

The U.S. deployment of thousands of troops, ships, and aircraft in the area while South Korea is firing thousands of rounds of live ammunition and missiles is an enormously dangerous provocation, not only to the DPRK but to China. The Yellow Sea also borders China. The island and the waters where the war maneuvers are taking place are north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and only eight miles from the coast of the DPRK.

On Sunday, December 19 in a day-long emergency session, the U.S. blocked in the UN Security Council any actions to resolve the crisis.

UNAC action program passed in Albany at the United National Antiwar Conference, July 2010 of over 800 antiwar, social justice and community organizations included the following Resolution on Korea:

15. In solidarity with the antiwar movements of Japan and Korea, each calling for U.S. Troops to Get Out Now, and given the great increase in U.S. military preparations against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, National Peace Conference participants will organize immediate protests following any attack by the U.S. on Korea. U.S. war preparations include stockpiling hundreds of bunker-busters and conducting major war games near the territorial waters of China and Korea. In keeping with our stand for the right of self-determination and our demand of Out Now, the National Peace Conference calls for Bringing All U.S. Troops Home Now!

UNAC urges the whole antiwar movement to begin to circulate messages alerts now in preparation. Together let's join together and demand: Bring all U.S. Troops Home Now! Stop the Wars and the Threats of War.

Please write to Lynne and make a generous contribution to her defense committee. She is now far away from home isolated from her family and friends. Indeed, cruel and unusual punishment for a 71-year-old woman and her family!

In earnest support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petitionrsn:Petition

We here undersigned express our support for the work and integrity of Julian Assange. We express concern that the charges against the WikiLeaks founder appear too convenient both in terms of timing and the novelty of their nature.

We call for this modern media innovator, and fighter for human rights extraordinaire, to be afforded the same rights to defend himself before Swedish justice that all others similarly charged might expect, and that his liberty not be compromised as a courtesy to those governments whose truths he has revealed have embarrassed.

GAP Inc: End Your Relationship with Supplier that Allows Workers to be Burned Alivehttp://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/workers_burned_alive_making_clothes_for_the_gap

A handful of East Bay organizations have put together an open letter to the strikers. If your organization would like to become a signatory, you can email me to put you on it you and can do so here.

A Letter to the Prisoners on Strike in Georgia,

We, as members of activist and community organizations in the Bay Area of California, send our support for your strike against the terrible conditions you face in Georgia's prisons. We salute you for making history as your strike has become the largest prison strike in the history of this nation. As steadfast defenders of human and civil rights, we recognize the potential that your action has to improve the lives of millions subject to inhumane treatment in correctional facilities across this country.

Every single day, prisoners face the same deplorable and unnecessarily punitive conditions that you have courageously decided to stand up against. For too long, this nation has chosen silence in the face of the gross injustices that our brothers and sisters in prison are subjected to. Your fight against these injustices is a necessary and righteous struggle that must be carried out to victory.

We have heard about the brutal acts that Georgia Department of Corrections officers have been resorting to as a means of breaking your protest and we denounce them. In order to put a stop to the violence to which you have been subjected, we are in the process of contacting personnel at the different prison facilities and circulating petitions addressed to the governor and the Georgia DOC. We will continue to expose the DOC's shameless physical attacks on you and use our influence to call for an immediate end to the violence.

Here, in the Bay Area, we are all too familiar with the violence that this system is known to unleash upon our people. Recently, our community erupted in protest over the killing of an unarmed innocent black man named Oscar Grant by transit police in Oakland. We forced the authorities to arrest and convict the police officer responsible for Grant's murder by building up a mass movement. We intend to win justice with you and stop the violent repression of your peaceful protest in the same way-by appealing to the power and influence of the masses.

We fully support all of your demands. We strongly identify with your demand for expanded educational opportunities. In recent years, our state government has been initiating a series of massive cuts to our system of public education that continue to endanger our right to a quality, affordable education; in response, students all across our state have stood up and fought back just as you are doing now. In fact, students and workers across the globe have begun to organize and fight back against austerity measures and the corresponding violence of the state. Just in the past few weeks in Greece, Ireland, Spain, England, Italy, Haiti, Puerto Rico - tens and hundreds of thousands of students and workers have taken to the streets. We, as a movement, are gaining momentum and we do so even more as our struggles are unified and seen as interdependent. At times we are discouraged; it may seem insurmountable, but in the words of Malcolm X, "Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression."

You have inspired us. News of your strike, from day one, has served to inspire and invigorate hundreds of students and community organizers here in Berkeley and Oakland alone. We are especially inspired by your ability to organize across color lines and are interested in hearing an account from the inside of how this process developed and was accomplished. You have also encouraged us to take more direct actions toward radical prison reform in our own communities, namely Santa Rita County Jail and San Quentin Prison. We are now beginning the process of developing a similar set of demands regarding expediting processing (can take 20-30 hours to get a bed, they call it "bullpen therapy"), nutrition, visiting and phone calls, educational services, legal support, compensation for labor and humane treatment in general. We will also seek to unify the education and prison justice movements by collaborating with existing organizations that have been engaging in this work.

We echo your call: No more Slavery! Injustice to one is injustice to all!

In us, students, activists, the community members and people of the Bay Area, you have an ally. We will continue to spread the news about your cause all over the Bay Area and California, the country and world. We pledge to do everything in our power to make sure your demands are met.

Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!URGENT ACTION APPEAL- From Amnesty International USA17 December 2010Click here to take action online: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084

To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success

For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf

Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row in California for 25 years, is asking the outgoing state governor to commute his death sentence before leaving office on 2 January 2011. Kevin Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence of the four murders for which he was sentenced to death. Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.

On the night of 4 June 1983, Douglas and Peggy Ryen were hacked and stabbed to death in their home in Chino Hills, California, along with their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes. The couple's eight-year-old son, Joshua Ryen, was seriously wounded, but survived. He told investigators that the attackers were three or four white men. In hospital, he saw a picture of Kevin Cooper on television and said that Cooper, who is black, was not the attacker. However, the boy's later testimony - that he only saw one attacker - was introduced at the 1985 trial. The case has many other troubling aspects which call into question the reliability of the state's case and its conduct in obtaining this conviction (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/013/2004/en).

Kevin Cooper was less than eight hours from execution in 2004 when the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted a stay and sent the case back to the District Court for testing on blood and hair evidence, including to establish if the police had planted evidence. The District Court ruled in 2005 that the testing had not proved Kevin Cooper's innocence - his lawyers (and five Ninth Circuit judges) maintain that it did not do the testing as ordered. Nevertheless, in 2007, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld the District Court's ruling. One of the judges described the result as "wholly discomforting" because of evidence tampering and destruction, but noted that she was constrained by US law, which places substantial obstacles in the way of successful appeals.

In 2009, the Ninth Circuit refused to have the whole court rehear the case. Eleven of its judges dissented. One of the dissenting opinions, running to more than 80 pages and signed by five judges, warned that "the State of California may be about to execute an innocent man". On the question of the evidence testing, they said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and...imposed unreasonable conditions on the testing" ordered by the Ninth Circuit. They pointed to a test result that, if valid, indicated that evidence had been planted, and they asserted that the district court had blocked further scrutiny of this issue.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had already denied clemency in 2004 when the Ninth Circuit issued its stay. At the time, he had said that the "courts have reviewed this case for more than eighteen years. Evidence establishing his guilt is overwhelming". Clearly, a notable number of federal judges disagree. The five judges in the Ninth Circuit's lengthy dissent in 2009 stated that the evidence of Kevin Cooper's guilt at his trial was "quite weak" and concluded that he "is probably innocent of the crimes for which the State of California is about to execute him".

BACKGROUND INFORMATIONOn 2 June 1983, two days before the Chino Hills murders, Kevin Cooper had escaped from a minimum security prison, where he was serving a four-year term for burglary, and had hidden in an empty house near the Ryen home for two nights. After his arrest, he became the focus of public hatred. Outside the venue of his preliminary hearing, for example, people hung an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the Nigger!!" At the time of the trial, jurors were confronted by graffiti declaring "Die Kevin Cooper" and "Kevin Cooper Must Be Hanged". Kevin Cooper pleaded not guilty - the jury deliberated for seven days before convicting him - and he has maintained his innocence since then. Since Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency in 2004, more evidence supporting Kevin Cooper's claim of innocence has emerged, including for example, testimony from three witnesses who say they saw three white men near the crime scene on the night of the murders with blood on them.

In 2007, Judge Margaret McKeown was the member of the Ninth Circuit's three-judge panel who indicated that she was upholding the District Court's 2005 ruling despite her serious concerns. She wrote: "Significant evidence bearing on Cooper's guilt has been lost, destroyed or left unpursued, including, for example, blood-covered coveralls belonging to a potential suspect who was a convicted murderer, and a bloody t-shirt, discovered alongside the road near the crime scene. The managing criminologist in charge of the evidence used to establish Cooper's guilt at trial was, as it turns out, a heroin addict, and was fired for stealing drugs seized by the police. Countless other alleged problems with the handling and disclosure of evidence and the integrity of the forensic testing and investigation undermine confidence in the evidence". She continued that "despite the presence of serious questions as to the integrity of the investigation and evidence supporting the conviction, we are constrained by the requirements of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)". Judge McKeown wrote that "the habeas process does not account for lingering doubt or new evidence that cannot leap the clear and convincing hurdle of AEDPA. Instead, we are left with a situation in which confidence in the blood sample is murky at best, and lost, destroyed or tampered evidence cannot be factored into the final analysis of doubt. The result is wholly discomforting, but one that the law demands".

Even if it is correct that the AEDPA demands this result, the power of executive clemency is not so confined. Last September, for example, the governor of Ohio commuted Kevin Keith's death sentence because of doubts about his guilt even though his death sentence had been upheld on appeal (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/079/2010/en). Governor Ted Strickland said that despite circumstantial evidence linking the condemned man to the crime, "many legitimate questions have been raised regarding the evidence in support of the conviction and the investigation which led to it. In particular, Mr Keith's conviction relied upon the linking of certain eyewitness testimony with certain forensic evidence about which important questions have been raised. I also find the absence of a full investigation of other credible suspects troubling." The same could be said in the case of Kevin Cooper, whose lawyer is asking Governor Schwarzenegger to commute the death sentence before he leaves office on 2 January 2011. While Kevin Cooper does not yet have an execution date, it is likely that one will be set, perhaps early in 2011.

More than 130 people have been released from death rows on grounds of innocence in the USA since 1976. At the original trial in each case, the defendant had been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is clear beyond any dispute that the USA's criminal justice system is capable of making mistakes. International safeguards require that the death penalty not be imposed if guilt is not "based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts". Amnesty International opposes all executions regardless of the seriousness of the crime or the guilt or innocence of the condemned.

California has the largest death row in the USA, with more than 700 prisoners under sentence of death out of a national total of some 3,200. California accounts for 13 of the 1,234 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977. There have been 46 executions in the USA this year. The last execution in California was in January 2006.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:- Acknowledging the seriousness of the crime for which Kevin Cooper was sentenced to death;- Urging Governor Schwarzenegger to take account of the continuing doubts about Kevin Cooper's guilt, including as expressed by more than 10 federal judges since 2004, when executive clemency was last requested;- Urging the Governor to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence.

Free the Children of Palestine!Sign Petition:http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html

Published by Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition on Dec 16, 2010Category: Children's RightsRegion: GLOBALTarget: President ObamaWeb site: http://www.al-awda.org

Background (Preamble):

According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old.

Children and teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.

Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense Children International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.

Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release. Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.

Petition:http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html

We, the undersigned call on US President Obama to direct Israel to

1. Stop all the night raids and arrests of Palestinian Children forthwith.

2. Immediately release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers.

3. End all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse against all Palestinian children.

4. Implement the full restoration of Palestinian children's rights in accordance with international law including, but not limited to, their right to return to their homes of origin, to education, to medical and psychological care, and to freedom of movement and expression.

The US government, which supports Israel to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars a year while most ordinary Americans are suffering in a very bad economy, is bound by its laws and international conventions to cut off all aid to Israel until it ends all of its violations of human rights and basic freedoms in a verifiable manner.

"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests."..."Publishing State Secrets" By Leon Trotsky Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64 November 22, 1917http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm

MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCEYour Year-End Gift for the ChildrenDouble your impact with this matching gift opportunity!

Dear Friend of the Children,

You may have recently received a letter from me via regular mail with a review of the important things you helped MECA accomplish for the children in 2010, along with a special Maia Project decal.

My letter to you also included an announcement of MECA's first ever matching gift offer. One of our most generous supporters will match all gifts received by December 31. 2010 to a total of $35,000.

So, whether you are a long time supporter, or giving for the first-time... Whether you can give $10 or $1,000... This is a unique opportunity to double the impact of your year-end gift!Your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar, making it go twice as far so that MECA can:

* Install twenty more permanent drinking water units in Gaza schools though our Maia Project * Continue our work with Playgrounds for Palestine to complete a community park in the besieged East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where violent Israeli settlers attack children and adults, Israeli police arrest the victims, and the city conducts "administrative demolitions" of Palestinian homes. * Send a large medical aid shipment to Gaza. * Renew support for "Let the Children Play and Heal," a program in Gaza to help children cope with trauma and grief through arts programs, referrals to therapists, educational materials for families and training for mothers.

Your support for the Middle East Children's Alliance's delivers real, often life-saving, help. And it does more than that. It sends a message of hope and solidarity to Palestine-showing the people that we are standing beside them as they struggle to bring about a better life for their children.

With warm regards,Barbara LubinFounder and Director

P.S. Please give as much as you possible can, and please make your contribution now, so it will be doubled. Thank you so much.

P.S.S. If you didn't receive a MAIA Project decal in the mail or if you would like another one, please send an email message to meca@mecaforpeace.org with "MAIA Project decal" in the subject line when you make your contribution.

For Immediate ReleaseAntiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.12/2/2010For more information: Joe Lombardo, 518-281-1968,UNACpeace@gmail.org, NationalPeaceConference.org

Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.

The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) calls for the release of Bradley Manning who is awaiting trial accused of leaking the material to Wikileaks that has been released over the past several months. We also call for an end to the harassment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and we call for an independent, international investigation of the illegal activity exposed through the material released by Wikileaks.

Before sending the material to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning tried to get his superiors in the military to do something about what he understood to be clear violations of international law. His superiors told him to keep quiet so Manning did the right thing; he exposed the illegal activity to the world.

The Afghan material leaked earlier shows military higher-ups telling soldiers to kill enemy combatants who were trying to surrender. The Iraq Wikileaks video from 2007 shows the US military killing civilians and news reporters from a helicopter while laughing about it. The widespread corruption among U.S. allies has been exposed by the most recent leaks of diplomatic cables. Yet, instead of calling for change in these policies, we hear only a call to suppress further leaks.

At the national antiwar conference held in Albany in July, 2010, at which UNAC was founded, we heard from Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers on the ground during the helicopter attack on the civilians in Iraq exposed by Wikileaks (see: http://www.mediasanctuary.org/movie/1810 ). He talked about removing wounded children from a civilian vehicle that the US military had shot up. It affected him so powerfully that he and another soldier who witnessed the massacre wrote a letter of apology to the families of the civilians who were killed.

We ask why this material was classified in the first place. There were no state secrets in the material, only evidence of illegal and immoral activity by the US military, the US government and its allies. To try to cover this up by classifying the material is a violation of our right to know the truth about these wars. In this respect, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be held up as heroes, not hounded for exposing the truth.

UNAC calls for an end to the illegal and immoral policies exposed by Wikileaks and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to threats against Iran and North Korea.

Gladys and Jamie Scott are returning home for the first time in 16 years.

This evening, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour suspended their sentences -- handed down in the extreme and biased ruling of Judge Marcus Gordon that condemned each of the women to double life sentences for an $11 robbery.

The moment I landed in Jackson, Mississippi, Governor Barbour called to tell me about the suspension. And as I prepare to meet with him tomorrow, along with Derrick Johnson, President of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, I want to be clear about one thing: This vindication is because of you.

The Scott sisters have read your notes and letters of support. Now please join me in welcoming them home. Sign the NAACP's welcome home card to Gladys and Jamie:

http://action.naacp.org/WelcomeHome

Jamie and Gladys always described the moment the police arrested them as a nightmare. Not just for themselves, but for their family -- for their children.

So we united together. We fought the injustice -- just as the NAACP has done for more than 100 years.

When we couldn't visit the Scott sisters, we wrote letters and notes to let them know we remembered them. When we wouldn't be heard by the political and judicial powers that be, we spoke louder. And because of that perseverance -- because of your perseverance -- the nightmare is finally over.

Celebrate this victory for Gladys and Jamie, and also for the NAACP community, by sending them a welcome home message. They would love to hear from you:

http://action.naacp.org/WelcomeHome

Last time I was in Mississippi was to file the petition for clemency with the Scott sisters' lawyer, Chokwe Lumumba, and Charles Hampton, Vice President of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP.

Today, thanks to you, I get to return to show the world that the NAACP will not stand idly by as our sisters and brothers are wrongfully accused.

I am humbled by how far your support has taken the Scott sisters on the road to justice and freedom. And with every step forward, we will secure a brighter future for their children, our children and our children's children.

It's been quite a ride the last four months since we took up the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Since then, we helped form the Bradley Manning Support Network, established a defense fund, and have already paid over half of Bradley's total $100,000 in estimated legal expenses.

Now, I'm asking for your support of Courage to Resist so that we can continue to support not only Bradley, but the scores of other troops who are coming into conﬂict with military authorities due to reasons of conscience.

"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution." -Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower

Iraq War over? Afghanistan occupation winding down? Not from what we see. Please take a look at, "Soldier Jeff Hanks refuses deployment, seeks PTSD help" in our December newsletter. Jeff's situation is not isolated. Actually, his story is only unique in that he has chosen to share it with us in the hopes that it may result in some change. Jeff's case also illustrates the importance of Iraq Veterans Against the War's new "Operation Recovery" campaign which calls for an end to the deployment of traumatized troops.

Most of the folks who call us for help continue to be effected by Stoploss, a program that involuntarily extends enlistments (despite Army promises of its demise), or the Individual Ready Reserve which recalls thousands of former Soldiers and Marines quarterly from civilian life.

Another example of our efforts is Kyle Wesolowski. After returning from Iraq, Kyle submitted an application for a conscientious objector discharge based on his Buddhist faith. Kyle explains, "My experience of physical threats, religious persecution, and general abuse seems to speak of a system that appears to be broken.... It appears that I have no other recourse but to now refuse all duties that prepare myself for war or aid in any way shape or form to other soldiers in conditioning them to go to war." We believe he shouldn't have to walk this path alone.

Sincerely,Jeff PatersonProject Director, Courage to ResistFirst US military service member to refuse to ﬁght in IraqPlease donate today.

https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590

P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!

Please click here to forward this to a friend who mightalso be interested in supporting GI resisters.http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com

"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."

Dear All,

The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.

Read the complete public letter and add your name at:http://standwithbrad.org/

On Friday, September 24th, the FBI raided homes in Chicago and Minneapolis, and turned the Anti-War Committee office upside down. We were shocked. Our response was strong however and we jumped into action holding emergency protests. When the FBI seized activists' personal computers, cell phones, and papers claiming they were investigating "material support for terrorism", they had no idea there would be such an outpouring of support from the anti-war movement across this country! Over 61 cities protested, with crowds of 500 in Minneapolis and Chicago. Activists distributed 12,000 leaflets at the One Nation Rally in Washington D.C. Supporters made thousands of calls to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Solidarity statements from community organizations, unions, and other groups come in every day. By organizing against the attacks, the movement grows stronger.

At the same time, trusted lawyers stepped up to form a legal team and mount a defense. All fourteen activists signed letters refusing to testify. So Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox withdrew the subpoenas, but this is far from over. In fact, the repression is just starting. The FBI continues to question activists at their homes and work places. The U.S. government is trying to put people in jail for anti-war and international solidarity activism and there is no indication they are backing off. The U.S. Attorney has many options and a lot of power-he may re-issue subpoenas, attempt to force people to testify under threat of imprisonment, or make arrests.

To be successful in pushing back this attack, we need your donation. We need you to make substantial contributions like $1000, $500, and $200. We understand many of you are like us, and can only afford $50, $20, or $10, but we ask you to dig deep. The legal bills can easily run into the hundreds of thousands. We are all united to defend a movement for peace and justice that seeks friendship with people in other countries. These fourteen anti-war activists have done nothing wrong, yet their freedom is at stake.

It is essential that we defend our sisters and brothers who are facing FBI repression and the Grand Jury process. With each of your contributions, the movement grows stronger.

Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to: Committee to Stop FBI RepressionP.O. Box 14183Minneapolis, MN 55414

This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!

Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and and forward it to all your lists.

"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"

http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html

(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)

[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]

Committee To Save Mumia Abu-JamalP.O. Box 2012New York, NY 10159-2012

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Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501c)3), and should be mailed to:

It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.

Short Video About Al-Awda's WorkThe following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurlSupport Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.

To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go tohttp://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.

11) Pentagon's Christmas Present: Largest Military Budget Since World War II"The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates American military spending for 2009 to have accounted for 43 percent of the world total. Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, earlier this year estimated the 2010 U.S. defense budget to constitute 47 percent of total worldwide military expenditures and to amount to 19 percent of all American federal spending."By Rick RozoffDecember 23, 2010http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pentagon-s-Christmas-Prese-by-Rick-Rozoff-101223-140.html

12) The Data and the RealityBy BOB HERBERTDecember 27, 2010http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/opinion/28herbert.html?hp

1) Times Sues City Police, Saying Information Has Been Illegally WithheldBy JAMES BARRONDecember 21, 2010http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/nyregion/22nypd.html?ref=nyregion

The New York Times has sued the New York Police Department, saying the department had routinely violated a state law that requires government agencies to provide information to the press and the public.

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, The Times described four requests made by reporters this year for information that it said the police had delayed or denied. The Times said the department's handling of the requests reflected a pattern and practice by which the police avoided providing material that the State Freedom of Information Law said must be released.

"We've become increasingly concerned over the last two years about a growing lack of transparency at the N.Y.P.D.," said David E. McCraw, a vice president and assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company. "Information that was once released is now withheld. Disclosures that could be made quickly are put on hold for months."

"The police have performed outstanding service to this city," Mr. McCraw added, "but it's important that they also meet their duties under the Freedom of Information Law. People have a right to know what public agencies are doing, and how they are doing it, so that there can be an informed public debate over what policies are pursued and how tax dollars are spent."

In the lawsuit, The Times asked for a judicial order requiring the police to turn over the information and barring the Police Department "from continuing its pattern and practice of violating FOIL," the acronym for the Freedom of Information Law.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said that based on a preliminary review of The Times's lawsuit, "none of the FOIL requests about which The Times complains, is, in our view, ripe for litigation."

"These requests are being processed by the N.Y.P.D. in accordance with controlling law," Mr. Browne said by e-mail. "We disagree with The Times's interpretation of FOIL as contained in the papers we received."

He said the department would not comment further "since these issues are now in litigation."

The four requests from Times reporters were for the addresses of New York City residents who had been granted gun permits, for the Police Department's database on hate crimes, for its database on crime incident reports and for the tracking log on Freedom of Information requests.

The lawsuit said the police had "no legal basis for withholding the materials sought" by the reporters.

It said the police had released the hate crimes database to The Times once before, in 2005.

The lawsuit also said the police had regularly failed to respond to requests as fast as the law required and had failed to consider appeals quickly when the department denied a request.

In recent years, the department has maintained a tight grip on what the public knows and does not know about its inner workings. Its strict control of information has ranged from data on crime trends to nuggets of information sought by journalists, scholars, lawmakers and others.

One example of the department's reluctance to give out data involved statistics for minor crimes - offenses like misdemeanor thefts and assaults, marijuana possession and sex offenses other than rape. The department acknowledged last month that it had not forwarded the data to the state since 2002. It was one of only two police agencies in the state that had not done so.

Information on the department's practice of stopping and questioning people on the street, and sometimes frisking them, was only sporadically reported from 2003 to 2007, when the department began to comply regularly with a law requiring it to give the information to the City Council.

The Times's lawsuit said the Freedom of Information Law imposed "specific deadlines, which the N.Y.P.D. persistently and as a matter of practice fails to meet." The lawsuit said that the law required the department "to make individualized determinations about extensions to those deadlines, based on specific factors."

But The Times said the Police Department did not appear to decide requests one by one. Sometimes it sends form letters, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also said that when an agency like the Police Department turned down a request and the person who made it filed an appeal, the agency was supposed to respond within 10 days. But the lawsuit said "the N.Y.P.D. as a matter of practice does not meet the deadline."

Of the appeals on the four information requests in the lawsuit, one was decided in 19 business days and another in 18. The Times never received a determination on its appeal of a third; a fourth has yet to be decided.

Another kind of provocateur is the person who can be pressurised, such as one who commits a smallish crime, and is told that if they do something, it will be 'forgotten'. Common amongst 'crooks', to get themselves of the hook, they inform on another. Check both sides.

Agent Provocateurs at demosTue Dec 21, 2010 9:34 am (PST)

Do we know who threw that fire-extinguisher? His boot-size may be important.

Here's a message from Canada on the subject:

This video comes from Canada, but thetechnique is used in the US every day ofthe week. The truly bizarre thing is no one seemsto know about it. [maybe they don't know about it in the US, but it's been used in Toronto at the G20 summit last summer, which, by the way, is proving difficult for the police to defend, that is, the police violence, kettling and arresting of nearly 1000 innocent and keeping them in a special prison for 24 hours.

and others....Every demonstration should have teams specifically charged with identifying these gun thugs (they're easy to find), pointing them out, and blowing their cover. It's a matter of public safety as these creeps are there specifically to incite violence.

Your tax dollars at work.

Here's how the adults deal with it.Video: http://www.brassche cktv.com/ page/288. htmlPolice inciting violenceVIDEO --- http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/288.htmlFor over ten years now, I've been writing about and documenting police riots at protests.

It's always the same story:

Undercover police dress up as protesters and incite, or even engage in, violence.

Uniformed police then take advantage of this to assault legitimate protesters, sometimes brutally.

It's the oldest trick in the book and the French have a phrase for it: "Agent Provocateur.

Bizarrely, US protesters NEVER seem to get their heads out of their arses and see it coming no matter how many times it gets pulled on them.

In contrast, one labor leader at the Montebello meeting of the so called "Security and Prosperity Summit" in Quebec earned the title LEADER and not only detected this crap as it was talking place, but confronted the government-employed criminals involved and forced them to stand down.

This kind of activity isn't legitimate police work. It's thug-for-hire work on behalf of fascists.

Next time you see one of these hulking morons with a mask on his face holding a rock or stick, rip off his mask and photograph him. Don't expect a shred of help from the gutless news media exposing these vermin. They'll never follow up on the story, but the photographs are a deterrent.

Look for the steroid pumped morons with close-cropped hair, polished shoes, and over the top ass-holic behavior. Those would be your police masquerading as protesters.

By the way, the so called "Security and Prosperity Summit" will be meeting in New Orleans in April. (Update: Meeting came and went.) Brasscheck TV will be there reporting on cop dirty tricks as they happen.

Note: New Orleans police have coincidentally been given a "grant" of assault weapons and riot gear recently. Also, an article recently appeared in New Orleans Magazine praising the local SWAT team for brutalizing local affordable housing protesters. How subtle.

How police staged riots at the Seattle at the WTO meeting:http://brasscheck.com/seattle

3) The Professional Left Versus The Left of UsBy Jared A. BallBlack Agenda Report, December 21, 2010http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/professional-left-versus-left-us

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was partially right when earlier this year he dismissed the "professional left." There is indeed a professional left, those whose entire careers and claims to fame are based on permanent liberal challenges to power and who arrogantly dismiss as immature, and worse dangerous, those who would push leftward beyond those limits. "Don't go too far," they tell us, "vote for us or THEY will get elected and then we're in real trouble!" But that's because liberals aren't in real trouble. They don't really believe that. If they did really believe that corporations were leading the planet to doom or that the fascists they are protecting us from are just outside the gates would they really only respond by a few rallies and a vote for a Democrat? Then maybe they are as "fucking stupid" as Rahm Emanuel said they are.

But to some the fascism warned of in all those faint allusions to totalitarian horrors already exists and the death camp trains have been running for decades with barely a peep from the professional liberals. Should we care about Obama's failure to close Guantanamo when he never felt pressure enough to even lie about wanting to shut down the Corrections Corporation of America? Prisons and the racist legislation, hyper-policing, brutality and fraudulent judicial system that keep them filled are among the nation's biggest businesses.

Joblessness and poverty continue to worsen and even the tens-of-thousands dying from war abroad are more than matched by the deaths in this country resulting from public policies which deny adequate housing, food and healthcare to millions. When rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are found to be as high in Black communities in the United States as they are in war-torn cities overseas and children tell counter military recruitment workers that they might as well risk death fighting in foreign wars when they get shot at here at home since at least that offers the chance of healthcare and education who is really interested in more liberal threats of "it could be worse"?

For Marcus Bellamy of the Arizona-based Black Organizing Network and Arizona Green Party this was the point of a series of events that took place this week in Phoenix. For Bellamy and co-organizers Arizona is the national "ground zero, the laboratory for the state testing out just how far it can go in terms of racial oppression." According to Bellamy all the recent fuss over Senate Bill 1070 itself works to mask that "the migrant community is being used as a mere experiment in methods that can one day be used against the entire population-workplace raids, detention centers, extension of biometric data collection in prisons, the hiring of an armed volunteer force that enforces immigration law, which in any other country would be labeled a paramilitary force), integration of local and national police agencies along with cooperation from the National Guard in the name of "border protection," and so on, may seem like an attack on the stereotypical "Mexican" but will eventually morph into a blanket assault on anyone who defies the status quo.

So sure, the professional left will undoubtedly tell us of all the small victories achieved in this week's reversal of "don't ask, don't tell," and the passage of the Low Power FM Radio Act. And we are soon to hear more from the Black professionals, or "surrogates," called upon by Obama to explain how Black people will benefit from the new tax bill. But who really cares if imperialism is gay or straight or if we are now to get more liberal/non-profit radio or if Black people will get extensions on unemployment benefits instead of proper jobs with proper wages? Black, Brown, Indigenous and working people need to abandon the conventions of the professional left and develop our own politics even if they be dismissed as immature, impractical and simple fantasy. Professional liberalism is no answer for us.

Several years ago Essence Farmer finally won her case in Arizona allowing her to run a natural hair braiding business without a license since cosmetology school does not teach that skill. This week Black Floridian barbers are being raided and jailed by armed and masked agents for precisely that same licensing issue. "Ground zero" strikes again.

BUNGAY, England - When Julian Assange wakes these days, he looks out from a three-story Georgian mansion house overlooking a man-made lake. Under a blanket of snow, the 650-acre Ellingham Hall estate, a mile back from the closest public road, is as tranquil a spot as can be found in eastern England.

But Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who is fighting accusations of sexual misconduct in Sweden, strolls through this bucolic idyll with an electronic tag on his ankle and a required daily 20-minute drive to the part-time police station in the neighboring town of Beccles. There he signs a register and chats "pleasantly" with the officers, according to their account, and returns to his curfew at the hall.

It is what Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has laconically referred to as "my high-tech house arrest" in interviews since arriving last week from the High Court in London, where he was granted bail of $370,000, much of it provided by wealthy celebrities and friends, including Vaughan Smith, Ellingham Hall's owner.

From his rural redoubt, Mr. Assange has gone on a media offensive, continuing to charge that he is the victim of a smear campaign led by the United States, which is weighing criminal prosecution for the leaks of nearly 750,000 classified documents.

In an interview with The Times of London on Tuesday, he compared himself to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying that when he was jailed at Wandsworth Prison in London, a black guard handed him a card saying, "I only have two heroes in the world, Dr. King and you." Mr. Assange added, "That is representative of 50 percent of people."

In the interview, he also compared the obloquy directed at WikiLeaks by the Obama administration and other critics with the "persecution" endured by American Jews in the 1950s. He added, "I'm not the Jewish people," but suggested that the common thread was that supporters of WikiLeaks and American Jews were "people who believe in freedom of speech and accountability."

Mr. Assange also denied prior contact with Bradley Manning, the Army private jailed on charges that he leaked thousands of classified government documents to WikiLeaks. "I never heard of the name Bradley Manning before it appeared in the media," he said in an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday.

While there have been a number of prosecutions of government employees under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information, there has never been a successful prosecution of a journalist for receiving and publishing such information. But prosecutors have been studying online chats in which Private Manning reportedly talked about contacts with Mr. Assange to see if they suggest that the WikiLeaks leader solicited or encouraged the leaks.

Mr. Assange noted that it was standard journalistic practice to call government officials and ask for information. Criminalizing such conduct would threaten the freedom of the press, he said.

"If they want to push the line that when a newspaperman talks to someone in the government about looking for things relating to potential abuses, that that is a conspiracy to commit espionage, that is going to take out all the good government journalism that takes place in the United States," Mr. Assange said.

In the interview with The Times of London, Mr. Assange also spoke of his "feeling of betrayal" toward the two women in Sweden, who have said he forced sex on them without using a condom, and in one case while the woman, according to her account, was asleep. Over the weekend, The Guardian and The New York Times obtained copies of a 68-page police document detailing the accusations against Mr. Assange, leaks he said were "clearly designed to undermine" his bail arrangements.

"Somebody in authority clearly intended to keep Julian in prison," he said of himself.

Mr. Assange said the accusations had put at risk what WikiLeaks had achieved. "We have changed governance, we have certainly changed many political figures within governments, we have caused new law reform efforts, we have caused police investigations into the abuses we expose, U.N. investigations, investigations here in the U.K., especially in relation to our revelation of the circumstances of the deaths of 109,000 people in Iraq," he said. He added, "We are also changing the perception of the West."

Attempts by The New York Times to interview Mr. Assange in recent days were unsuccessful. For months, he has regularly changed cellphones, and had members of his close-knit entourage answer them for him.

Recently, even those have been switched off, and Ellingham Hall has padlocked its gates against intruders. Telephones there go unanswered, and the hall's Web site for weddings and shooting parties, during which the public is charged $40 to shoot a pheasant, has been taken off-line.

Where the private road leading to Ellingham Hall begins, WikiLeaks supporters who have gathered to support Mr. Assange have taped a hand-lettered placard to an electricity junction box, next to one posted by Mr. Smith advertising "fresh eggs," saying "Free Bradley Manning."

Mr. Assange has given conflicting accounts of the handling of his case in Sweden. Immediately after an initial warrant was issued for his arrest in August, he said he had "no idea" who his accusers were; he has since acknowledged that he slept with both of the women over a four-day period before the warrant was issued. He has said he waited weeks to be interviewed by the police in Sweden; they have said that it was Mr. Assange who delayed meeting with them.

He said in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday that he saw no reason to return to Sweden to answer the allegations. Asked why he would not comply with the legal processes of a country with a respected system of jurisprudence, he described Sweden as "a bit more of a banana republic" than its reputation suggested, and said his WikiLeaks work was too important to answer to "random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat."

"They can come here, or we can have a video linkup, or they can accept a statement of mine," he said. In the BBC interview, Mr. Assange acknowledged obliquely that he had high ambitions for himself, saying, "Everybody would like to be a messianic figure without dying."

At times in the interviews, he seemed conflicted about the impact of the Swedish allegations. Speaking to the BBC, he said he thought they could be "quite helpful to our organization" because "it will expose a tremendous abuse of power." But he also rued the impact on his own reputation, saying that his name was now linked widely on the Internet with the rape allegation.

Using Google, he said, and "searching for my name and the word 'rape,' there are some 30 million Web pages. So this has been a very successful smear."

PRICHARD, Ala. - This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry.

Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.

Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy. Alfred Arnold, a 66-year-old retired fire captain, has gone back to work as a shopping mall security guard to try to keep his house. Eddie Ragland, 59, a retired police captain, accepted help from colleagues, bake sales and collection jars after he was shot by a robber, leaving him badly wounded and unable to get to his new job as a police officer at the regional airport.

Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. "When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house," said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. "He was a proud enough man that he wouldn't accept help."

The situation in Prichard is extremely unusual - the city has sought bankruptcy protection twice - but it proves that the unthinkable can, in fact, sometimes happen. And it stands as a warning to cities like Philadelphia and states like Illinois, whose pension funds are under great strain: if nothing changes, the money eventually does run out, and when that happens, misery and turmoil follow.

It is not just the pensioners who suffer when a pension fund runs dry. If a city tried to follow the law and pay its pensioners with money from its annual operating budget, it would probably have to adopt large tax increases, or make huge service cuts, to come up with the money.

Current city workers could find themselves paying into a pension plan that will not be there for their own retirements. In Prichard, some older workers have delayed retiring, since they cannot afford to give up their paychecks if no pension checks will follow.

So the declining, little-known city of Prichard is now attracting the attention of bankruptcy lawyers, labor leaders, municipal credit analysts and local officials from across the country. They want to see if the situation in Prichard, like the continuing bankruptcy of Vallejo, Calif., ultimately creates a legal precedent on whether distressed cities can legally cut or reduce their pensions, and if so, how.

"Prichard is the future," said Michael Aguirre, the former San Diego city attorney, who has called for San Diego to declare bankruptcy and restructure its own outsize pension obligations. "We're all on the same conveyor belt. Prichard is just a little further down the road."

Many cities and states are struggling to keep their pension plans adequately funded, with varying success. New York City plans to put $8.3 billion into its pension fund next year, twice what it paid five years ago. Maryland is considering a proposal to raise the retirement age to 62 for all public workers with fewer than five years of service.

Illinois keeps borrowing money to invest in its pension funds, gambling that the funds' investments will earn enough to pay back the debt with interest. New Jersey simply decided not to pay the $3.1 billion that was due its pension plan this year.

Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota have all taken the unusual step of reducing the benefits they pay their current retirees by cutting cost-of-living increases; retirees in all three states are suing.

No state or city wants to wind up like Prichard.

Driving down Wilson Avenue here - a bleak stretch of shuttered storefronts, with pawn shops and beauty parlors that operate behind barred windows and signs warning of guard dogs - it is hard to see vestiges of the Prichard that was a boom town until the 1960s. The city once had thriving department stores, two theaters and even a zoo. "You couldn't find a place to park in that city," recalled Kenneth G. Turner, a retired paramedic whose grandfather pushed for the city's incorporation in 1925.

The city's rapid decline began in the 1970s. The growth of other suburbs, white flight and then middle-class flight all took their tolls, and the city's population shrank by 40 percent to about 27,000 today, from its peak of 45,000. As people left, the city's tax base dwindled.

Prichard's pension plan was established by state law during the good times, in 1956, to supplement Social Security. By the standard of other public pension plans, and the six-figure pensions that draw outrage in places like California and New Jersey, it is not especially rich. Its biggest pension came to about $39,000 a year, for a retired fire chief with many years of service. The average retiree got around $12,000 a year. But the plan allowed workers to retire young, in their 50s. And its benefits were sweetened over time by the state legislature, which did not pay for the added benefits.

For many years, the city - like many other cities and states today - knew that its pension plan was underfunded. As recently as 2004, the city hired an actuary, who reported that "the plan is projected to exhaust the assets around 2009, at which time benefits will need to be paid directly from the city's annual finances."

The city had already taken the unusual step of reducing pension benefits by 8.5 percent for current retirees, after it declared bankruptcy in 1999, yielding to years of dwindling money, mismanagement and corruption. (A previous mayor was removed from office and found guilty of neglect of duty.) The city paid off its last creditors from the bankruptcy in 2007. But its current mayor, Ronald K. Davis, never complied with an order from the bankruptcy court to begin paying $16.5 million into the pension fund to reduce its shortfall.

A lawyer representing the city, R. Scott Williams, said that the city simply did not have the money. "The reality for Prichard is that if you took money to build the pension up, who's going to pay the garbage man?" he asked. "Who's going to pay to run the police department? Who's going to pay the bill for the street lights? There's only so much money to go around."

Workers paid 5.5 percent of their salaries into the pension fund, and the city paid 10.5 percent. But the fund paid out more money than it took in, and by September 2009 there was no longer enough left in the fund to send out the $150,000 worth of monthly checks owed to the retirees. The city stopped paying its pensions. And no one stepped in to enforce the law.

The retirees, who were not unionized, sued. The city tried to block their suit by declaring bankruptcy, but a judge denied the request. The city is appealing. The retirees filed another suit, asking the city to pay at least some of the benefits they are owed. A mediation effort is expected to begin soon. Many retirees say they would accept reduced benefits.

Companies with pension plans are required by federal law to put money behind their promises years in advance, and the government can impose punitive taxes on those that fail to do so, or in some cases even seize their pension funds.

Companies are also required to protect their pension assets. So if a corporate pension fund falls below 60 cents' worth of assets for every dollar of benefits owed, workers can no longer accrue additional benefits. (Prichard was down to just 33 cents on the dollar in 2003.)

And if a company goes bankrupt, the federal government can take over its pension plan and see that its retirees receive their benefits. Although some retirees receive less than they were promised, no retiree from a federally insured plan in the private sector has come away empty-handed since the federal pension law was enacted in 1974. The law does not cover public sector workers.

Last week several dozen retirees - one using a wheelchair, some with canes - attended the weekly City Council meeting, asking for something before Christmas. Mary Berg, 61, a former assistant city clerk whose mother was once the city's zookeeper, read them the names of 11 retirees who had died since the checks stopped coming.

"I hope that on Christmas morning, when you are with your families around your Christmas trees, that you remember that most of the retirees will not be opening presents with their families," she told them.

The budget did not move forward. Mayor Davis was out of town.

"Merry Christmas!" shouted a man from the back row of the folding chairs. The retirees filed out. One woman could not hold back her tears.

After the meeting, Troy Ephriam, a council member who became chairman of the pension fund when it was nearly broke, sat in his office and recalled some of the failed efforts to put more money into the pension fund.

"I think the biggest disappointment I have is that there was not a strong enough effort to put something in there," he said. "And that's the reason that it's hard for me to look these people in the face: because I'm not certain we really gave our all to prevent this."

A Manhattan judge criticized the policing tactics in New York City Housing Authority developments, ruling on Tuesday that officers appeared to be routinely flouting the law by questioning people without legal justification.

The decision by acting Supreme Court Justice Analisa J. Torres barred the admission of 29 plastic bags of cocaine that the police seized last February from Jose Ventura in the lobby of the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side.

More broadly, the court action renewed a debate about the policing tactics in public housing, including the use of "stop, question and frisk" and vertical patrols. Officers use violations of Housing Authority rules - which forbid people from being in city housing projects unless they live there or are visiting someone - to justify the stops.

In her ruling, Justice Torres cited the testimony by Police Officer Jason Del Toro, who said the police could simply question anyone they encountered inside a public housing building. The judge wrote that officers had to have a legally meaningful reason for the stop, such as the site being drug- prone.

"To the extent that Del Toro's description of vertical patrols is accurate, that in public housing the police routinely engage in random, unjustified questioning - and there is evidence that they do - the practice would amount to a systematic violation" of the court decision that spells out the legal basis for stops and questioning, Justice Torres wrote.

Officer Del Toro approached Mr. Ventura during a vertical patrol simply after spotting him and without establishing a legal reason to question him, the judge wrote. In testimony at a suppression hearing, the officer never mentioned "whether the building or the area is drug-prone," the judge wrote.

After Mr. Ventura was arrested for trespassing, a second officer discovered the cocaine.

But in her ruling, Justice Torres wrote: "No matter the location, luxurious or modest, the police must have 'some objective credible reason,' to request information about a person's residency. Officers conducting vertical patrols are not permitted to select individuals for questioning based on presence alone."

A large volume of all the street stops police officers make in New York are for trespassing, according to an analysis of police data by The New York Times. Officers cited a suspicion of trespassing 369,000 times from 2003 through March 2010, or 12 percent of all stops. But in precincts with large clusters of public housing, up to 30 percent of stops were conducted on suspicion of trespassing.

Critics say the trespassing stops are largely unwarranted. Indeed, the analysis by The Times showed that trespassing stops were far more likely than most stops to result in nothing more than an inconvenient delay. Few moved beyond the questioning stage. Two percent of stops where trespassing was suspected - about 7,000 - yielded drugs or other contraband. A total of 81 trespassing stops yielded a gun.

Fundamentally, when officers stop people to question them, they are supposed to record both a reason for the stop - like the person's having a weaponlike bulge in his pocket - and the crime that the person is suspected of having committed.

But among all trespassing stops from 2003 through March 2010, two-thirds - more than 257,000 - listed only the vague category of "other" or "furtive movements" as the reason for the stop. In a majority of those cases, the officers indicated that the stop took place in a high-crime area, which would satisfy what Justice Torres said the police needed as a minimum threshold to make a trespassing stop.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said the judge's decision was "not a setback" because it was consistent with new housing vertical patrol, procedures and training curriculum put in place this year.

Before making a trespass arrest, Mr. Browne said, officers are trained to ask a person: Do you live in the building? Are you visiting someone? Do you have business there? Based on the answers, and on follow-up questions, an officer might establish probable cause for an arrest, or might tell the person to leave or become satisfied that he or she can stay.

"Housing officers are trained that they must establish a reason to approach someone before questioning individuals in a housing development - for example, violations of Housing Authority rules and regulations," Mr. Browne said. "Furthermore, the judge said the officer in the Ventura case did not adequately establish reasonable suspicion or properly articulate probable cause for a trespassing arrest."

Mr. Browne said the department's new guidelines and training grew out of meetings with tenants' organizations and the city Housing Authority, and did not suggest that officers' behavior in patrolling public housing prior to the new rules was faulty.

A spokeswoman for Bridget G. Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor, said the judge's decision was narrow and "we're not concerned that it has any precedential value."

But Steven Banks, attorney-in-chief at the Legal Aid Society, said that what Officer Del Toro "candidly admitted" in his testimony is a "serious daily occurrence." He said it encapsulated what had led his agency, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc., and a private law firm to file a federal lawsuit against the city.

Gov. David A. Paterson announced on Thursday that he had commuted the prison sentence of a black man who fatally shot an unarmed white teenager outside the man's house in August 2006, weighing in on a case where the issue of race on Long Island became as much fodder for debate as the man's innocence or guilt.

The trial of the man, John H. White, had racial overtones, as defense lawyers suggested that the tension associated with the Deep South in the civil rights era was alive in 2006, in a New York suburb with good schools, high property values and privileged children.

Mr. White, 57, was convicted of manslaughter for shooting Daniel Cicciaro, 17, point-blank in the face after Daniel and several friends had left a party and showed up late at night at Mr. White's house in Miller Place, a predominantly white hamlet in Suffolk County.

The white teenagers had arrived to challenge Mr. White's son Aaron, then 19, to a fight. The white teenagers used threats, profanities and racial epithets outside the house. Mr. White, who had been asleep, grabbed a loaded Beretta pistol he kept in his garage.

In a statement, Mr. Paterson, who leaves office next week, said, "My decision today may be an affront to some and a joy to others, but my objective is only to seek to ameliorate the profound suffering that occurred as a result of this tragic event."

Mr. White, reached by phone at his home on Thursday night and asked for his reaction to the commutation, said, "I'm blessed and highly favored, brother."

"I thank the Lord God most of all - he's my savior," he added. "Every day I thank my savior I am alive."

Asked about the governor's decision, he said, "I won't get into all that; I'll just say that Jesus is the reason we celebrate Christmas."

Mr. White, who had served five months at an upstate New York prison for the killing, was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and of criminal possession of a weapon. He had remained free on bail during an appeal, but after the appeal was rejected, a judge gave him a sentence of 20 months to 4 years in prison, a spokeswoman for the State Division of Parole said. The maximum sentence, under legal guidelines, would have been between 4 and 11 years.

In July, Mr. White began serving his sentence at the Mount McGregor Correctional Facility, in Saratoga County. He would have been eligible for parole roughly two months after his first hearing date, next October.

Frederick K. Brewington, a defense lawyer who represented Mr. White during the trial, said a group of advocates for Mr. White made an application to Mr. Paterson for a pardon, "outlining the reasons, what the particulars were and the value to the community." He added that supporters of Mr. White had organized a letter-writing campaign to urge the governor to consider Mr. White's case.

A commutation lessens the severity of the punishment. A pardon excuses or forgives the offense itself.

At the trial, Mr. White testified that his son woke him from a deep sleep the night of the shooting, yelling that "some kids are coming here to kill me." Mr. White said he considered the angry teenagers a "lynch mob."

Mr. White said their racist language recalled the hatred he saw as a child visiting the segregated Deep South and stories of his grandfather's being chased out of Alabama in the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan. He testified that his grandfather taught him how to shoot and bequeathed him the pistol he used.

But Mr. White said the shooting happened accidentally after he began turning to retreat and Daniel lunged at the gun.

Thomas Spota, the Suffolk County district attorney, said in a statement, "I strongly believe the governor should have had the decency and the compassion to at least contact the victim's family to allow them to be heard before commuting the defendant's sentence."

Reached at his auto body shop in Port Jefferson Station, the teenager's father, Daniel Cicciaro, reacted with annoyance when a reporter identified himself.

"Yeah, what do you need? An oil change?" he said. "We got nothing to say about it."

Mr. Brewington said that Mr. White was released from prison at 8 a.m. on Thursday, and that the White family was happy with the decision.

"They're all very thankful, particularly at this time of year for the blessings bestowed upon them and the thoughtful approach by the governor's office," Mr. Brewington said.

Mr. Paterson has granted nine pardons, three commutations and one clemency, and plans to make more pardons in immigration cases before leaving office on Dec. 31, officials in his office said Thursday.

The governor began a special clemency process in the spring intended to help permanent legal residents who were at risk of deportation because of long-ago or minor convictions. This month, he pardoned six of those immigrants, including a financial administrator at the City University of New York.

In the case of Mr. White, his lawyer, Mr. Brewington, acknowledged that race had played a big role in the trial, but he cautioned against viewing the commutation as racially based, especially because Mr. Paterson is black.

"He reviewed this matter as he reviews any other matter," he said. "People have to be careful not to fan the flames of racism. If the governor happened to be white and he commuted the sentence of a white person, would that be an issue?"

The small office of Courage to Resist, a nonprofit group in Oakland, is full of items featuring the smiling face of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of passing secret government documents to WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning T-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers - even whistles - are for sale.

Jeff Paterson, the project director of the organization, which has supported dozens of service members who have refused deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan, said the group began to raise money for Private Manning's legal defense after he was arrested in May.

WikiLeaks was not supporting the 23-year-old private first class "who gave them all this information," said Mr. Paterson, 42, a lanky former Marine, who was himself jailed for refusing to board a plane bound for Saudi Arabia after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has said he has never spoken with Private Manning and does not know who is behind the leaks. WikiLeaks technology was "designed from the very beginning to make sure that we never know the identities or names of people submitting us material," Mr. Assange told ABC News.

But Private Manning's arrest by the Army, which came after he told a computer hacker that he had leaked video of a helicopter attack that killed two Reuters photographers and Iraqi civilians, along with 260,000 diplomatic cables and intelligence reports on the war in Afghanistan, is proof enough for Mr. Paterson.

Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, is also a supporter. "What I read from his motives seems very familiar to me based on my own experience," Mr. Ellsberg said.

Courage to Resist has raised more than $100,000 to support Private Manning's legal fund, Mr. Paterson said. An activist with the group visits Private Manning in prison every two weeks.

"He has supporters all over the world," said Adam Seibert-Szyper, 39, a staff member who deserted the Marine Corps in 1996. He leafed through envelopes mailed from Brazil, South Africa and Thailand. One envelope, from British Columbia, included a stick of incense and a piece of crystal.

But helping Private Manning has been tricky. He has never publicly defended himself in political or moral terms, and questions remain about what Private Manning may have leaked.

The lack of clarity surrounding Private Manning's involvement has made building public support a challenge, even in friendly forums like the Berkeley City Council, which last week declined to back a measure calling Private Manning a hero.

Robert Meola, an activist who drafted the resolution as chairman of Berkeley's Peace and Justice Commission, said he would fight for Private Manning.

"If he didn't do it, then he's in pretrial confinement in isolation for several months, and he should be freed," Mr. Meola said.

"If he did do it, I definitely feel that he's a hero," Mr. Meola added, arguing that revelations contained in the leaked documents "could potentially stop the immoral and illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

ISTANBUL - Thousands of people gathered along the shores of Istanbul on Sunday afternoon to welcome home the Mavi Marmara, the ship that was raided by Israel as it led a flotilla aimed at breaking the blockade of Gaza.

Nine people were killed in the raid last May, which drew international condemnation and helped lead to the easing of restrictions on Gaza. The raid also created a diplomatic standoff between Turkey and Israel.

Groups waving Palestinian and Turkish flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans stood by the ship, which had been confiscated by Israel. On its return on Sunday, it was decorated with posters of the dead passengers.

"Welcome to your soil," said Ahmet Dogan, father of Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old Turkish-American citizen who was killed in the raid. "Dear Mavi Marmara, hold your head high, you've done your duty, acted as the shield for the innocent."

During the ceremony organized by the ship's owner, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, speeches in Arabic and Turkish were often interrupted by shouts of "God is great!" and "Terrorist Israel!"

Turkey, which had long been a close ally of Israel, has demanded an apology and compensation for the deaths of the activists killed in the raid and recalled its ambassador. Israel has refused to apologize, saying that the ship was warned to stay away and that Israeli commandos fired in self-defense after the activists aboard the ship fired first.

The whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks has not been convicted of a crime. The Justice Department has not even pressed charges over its disclosure of confidential State Department communications. Nonetheless, the financial industry is trying to shut it down.

Visa, MasterCard and PayPal announced in the past few weeks that they would not process any transaction intended for WikiLeaks. Earlier this month, Bank of America decided to join the group, arguing that WikiLeaks may be doing things that are "inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments."

The Federal Reserve, the banking regulator, allows this. Like other companies, banks can choose whom they do business with. Refusing to open an account for some undesirable entity is seen as reasonable risk management. The government even requires banks to keep an eye out for some shady businesses - like drug dealing and money laundering - and refuse to do business with those who engage in them.

But a bank's ability to block payments to a legal entity raises a troubling prospect. A handful of big banks could potentially bar any organization they disliked from the payments system, essentially cutting them off from the world economy.

The fact of the matter is that banks are not like any other business. They run the payments system. That is one of the main reasons that governments protect them from failure with explicit and implicit guarantees. This makes them look not too unlike other public utilities. A telecommunications company, for example, may not refuse phone or broadband service to an organization it dislikes, arguing that it amounts to risky business.

Our concern is not specifically about payments to WikiLeaks. This isn't the first time a bank shunned a business on similar risk-management grounds. Banks in Colorado, for instance, have refused to open bank accounts for legal dispensaries of medical marijuana.

Still, there are troubling questions. The decisions to bar the organization came after its founder, Julian Assange, said that next year it will release data revealing corruption in the financial industry. In 2009, Mr. Assange said that WikiLeaks had the hard drive of a Bank of America executive.

What would happen if a clutch of big banks decided that a particularly irksome blogger or other organization was "too risky"? What if they decided - one by one - to shut down financial access to a newspaper that was about to reveal irksome truths about their operations? This decision should not be left solely up to business-as-usual among the banks.

11) Pentagon's Christmas Present: Largest Military Budget Since World War II"The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates American military spending for 2009 to have accounted for 43 percent of the world total. Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, earlier this year estimated the 2010 U.S. defense budget to constitute 47 percent of total worldwide military expenditures and to amount to 19 percent of all American federal spending."By Rick RozoffDecember 23, 2010http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pentagon-s-Christmas-Prese-by-Rick-Rozoff-101223-140.html

On December 22 both houses of the U.S. Congress unanimously passed a bill authorizing $725 billion for next year's Defense Department budget.

The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, was approved by all 100 senators as required and by a voice vote in the House.

The House had approved the bill, now sent to President Barack Obama to sign into law, five days earlier in a 341-48 roll call, but needed to vote on it again after the Senate altered it in the interim.

The proposed figure for the Pentagon's 2011 war chest includes, in addition to the base budget, $158.7 billion for what are now euphemistically referred to as overseas contingency operations: The military occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

The $725 billion figure, although $17 billion more than the White House had requested, is not the final word on the subject, however, as supplements could be demanded as early as the beginning of next year, especially in regard to the Afghan war that will then be in its eleventh calendar year.

Even as it currently is, the amount is the highest in constant dollars (pegged at any given year's dollar and adjusted for inflation) since 1945, the final year of the Second World War. With recent U.S. census figures at 308 million, next year the Pentagon will spend $2,354 for every citizen of the country at the $725 billion price tag alone.

Last year's Pentagon budget, by way of comparison, was $680 billion, a base budget of $533.8 billion and the remainder for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In July of this year Congress approved the 2010 Supplemental Appropriations Act which contained an additional $37 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Next year's defense authorization of $725 billion compares to, according to the Center for Defense Information, a Pentagon budget of $444.6 billion in 1946; $460.4 billion in 1968, the highest yearly amount during the Vietnam War; and $443.4 billion in 1988, the highest during the eight years of the Ronald Reagan administration's massive military buildup. (Numbers in 2004 constant dollars.) [1]

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates American military spending for 2009 to have accounted for 43 percent of the world total. Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, earlier this year estimated the 2010 U.S. defense budget to constitute 47 percent of total worldwide military expenditures and to amount to 19 percent of all American federal spending.

In addition, Pentagon spending has increased by 100 percent since 1998 and "the Obama budget plans to spend more on the Pentagon over eight years than any administration has since World War II." [2]

With 2.25 million full-time civilian and military personnel, excluding part-time National Guard and Reserve members, the Defense Department is the U.S.'s largest employer, outstripping Walmart with 1.4 million employees and the U.S Post Office with 599,000. [3]

"Add in what Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and the Energy departments spend on defense and total US military spending will reach $861 billion in fiscal 2011, exceeding that of all other nations combined," according to Todd Harrison, senior fellow for Defense Budget Studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. [4]

In April Robert Higgs of The Independent Institute advocated that the budgets - in part or in whole - of the departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Energy, State and Treasury and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) should be calculated in the real military budget, which would in 2009 would have increased it to $901.5 billion.

"Adding [the] interest component to the previous all-agency total, the grand total comes to $1,027.8 billion, which is 61.5 percent greater than the Pentagon's outlays alone."

His numbers are:

National Security Outlays in Fiscal Year 2009(billions of dollars)

Department of Defense 636.5

Department of Energy (nuclear weapons and environmental cleanup) 16.7

Department of State (plus international assistance) 36.3

Department of Veterans Affairs 95.5

Department of Homeland Security 51.7

Department of the Treasury (for the Military Retirement Fund) 54.9

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1/2 of total) 9.6

Net interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays 126.3

Total 1,027.5 [5]

The above-cited Carl Conetta stated at the beginning of this year that the 2011 Pentagon budget will mark a milestone in that "the inflation-adjusted rise in spending since 1998 will probably exceed 100% in real terms by the end of the fiscal year.

"Taking the 2011 budget into account, the Defense Department has been given about $7.2 trillion since 1998, when the post-Cold War decline in defense spending ended. Approximately $2.5 trillion of this total is due to spending above the annual level set in 1998. This added amount constitutes the post-1998 spending surge."

Based on constant 2010 dollars, Conetta further details that the Ronald Reagan administration spent $4.1 trillion on the Defense Department, the Georgia W. Bush administration spent $4.65 trillion and "Barack Obama plans to spend more than $5 trillion."

He also compares the two previous largest post-World War Two surges in U.S. military spending to the current one:

From 1958-1968: 43 percent

From: 1975-1985 57 percent

In regards to which he said, "the 1998-2011 surge is as large as these two predecessors combined."

His calculations also include a growth in Pentagon contract employees of 40 percent since 1989, thereby freeing up uniformed service members for more direct combat roles.

The U.S. share of global military spending grew from 28 percent during the Cold War to 41 percent by 2006 and that of NATO member states, including the U.S., from 49 percent to 70 percent in the same period.

Contrariwise, the "group of potential adversary and competitor states has gone from claiming a 42 % share to just 16 % in 2006.

"Had Ronald Reagan -" who is generally regarded a hawkish president -" wanted to achieve in the 1980s the ratio between US and adversary spending that existed in 2006, he would have had to quadruple his defense budgets.

"And, of course, since 2006, the US defense budget has not receded, but instead grown by another 20% in real terms.

"By 2011, the United States will probably account for more than half of all global military spending calculated in terms of 'purchasing power parity' (which corrects for differences between national economies)." [6]

The defense authorization bill passed on December 22, despite its monumental and unprecedented size, has been routinely described in the American press as stripped-down, scaled-down and pared-down because an arms manufacturer or two, their lobbyists and obedient congresspersons didn't get every new defense contract and weapons project they desired three days before Christmas.

The December 22 vote in the House was, as Associated Press accurately described it, conducted without debate or discussion - and "without major restrictions on the conduct of operations" - particularly in regards to the $158.7 billion for the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, $75 million to train and equip the armed forces of Yemen for the counterinsurgency campaign in that country and $205 million more to fund Israel's Iron Dome missile shield.

Regarding the first vote on December 17: "This year's bill is mostly noteworthy for its broad bipartisan support during wartime....Unlike during the height of the Iraq War when anti-war Democrats tried to use the legislation to force troops home, the House passed the defense bill Friday with almost no debate on Afghanistan." [7]

Aside from voting for the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy as a stand-alone measure, excising an amendment to allow abortions to be performed on military bases, and refusing reparations to victims of the World War Two Japanese occupation of the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam (apparently $100 million for the purpose was considered excessive in the $725 billion authorization), there was no meaningful dissent in either house of Congress.

Increasing the U.S. war budget to the highest level it's been since the largest and deadliest war in history while no nation or group of nations poses a serious threat to the country, and to a degree where it effectively exceeds the defense spending of the rest of the world combined, is all in the proper order of things for the world's sole military superpower.

12) The Data and the RealityBy BOB HERBERTDecember 27, 2010http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/opinion/28herbert.html?hp

I keep hearing from the data zealots that holiday sales were impressive and the outlook for the economy in 2011 is not bad.

Maybe they've stumbled onto something in their windowless rooms. Maybe the economy really is gathering steam. But in the rough and tumble of the real world, where families have to feed themselves and pay their bills, there are an awful lot of Americans being left behind.

A continuing national survey of workers who lost their jobs during the Great Recession, conducted by two professors at Rutgers University, offers anything but a rosy view of the economic prospects for ordinary Americans. It paints, instead, a portrait filled with gloom.

More than 15 million Americans are officially classified as jobless. The professors, at the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, have been following their representative sample of workers since the summer of 2009. The report on their latest survey, just out this month, is titled: "The Shattered American Dream: Unemployed Workers Lose Ground, Hope, and Faith in Their Futures."

Over the 15 months that the surveys have been conducted, just one-quarter of the workers have found full-time jobs, nearly all of them for less pay and with fewer or no benefits. "For those who remain unemployed," the report says, "the cupboard has long been bare."

These were not the folks being coldly and precisely monitored, classified and quantified as they made their way to the malls to kick-start the economy. These were among the many millions of Americans who spent the holidays hurting.

As the report states: "The recession has been a cataclysm that will have an enduring effect. It is hard to overstate the dire shape of the unemployed."

Nearly two-thirds of the unemployed workers who were surveyed have been out of work for a year or more. More than a third have been jobless for two years. With their savings exhausted, many have borrowed money from relatives or friends, sold possessions to make ends meet and decided against medical examinations or treatments they previously would have considered essential.

Older workers who are jobless are caught in a particularly precarious state of affairs. As the report put it:

"We are witnessing the birth of a new class - the involuntarily retired. Many of those over age 50 believe they will not work again at a full-time 'real' job commensurate with their education and training. More than one-quarter say they expect to retire earlier than they want, which has long-term consequences for themselves and society. Many will file for Social Security as soon as they are eligible, despite the fact that they would receive greater benefits if they were able to delay retiring for a few years."

There is a fundamental disconnect between economic indicators pointing in a positive direction and the experience of millions of American families fighting desperately to fend off destitution. Some three out of every four Americans have been personally touched by the recession - either they've lost a job or a relative or close friend has. And the outlook, despite the spin being put on the latest data, is not promising.

No one is forecasting a substantial reduction in unemployment rates next year. And, as Motoko Rich reported in The Times this month, temporary workers accounted for 80 percent of the 50,000 jobs added by private sector employers in November.

Carl Van Horn, the director of the Heldrich Center and one of the two professors (the other is Cliff Zukin) conducting the survey, said he was struck by how pessimistic some of the respondents have become - not just about their own situation but about the nation's future. The survey found that workers in general are increasingly accepting the notion that the effects of the recession will be permanent, that they are the result of fundamental changes in the national economy.

"They're losing the idea that if you are determined and work hard, you can get ahead," said Dr. Van Horn. "They're losing that sense of optimism. They don't think that they or their children are going to fare particularly well."

The fact that so many Americans are out of work, or working at jobs that don't pay well, undermines the prospects for a robust recovery. Jobless people don't buy a lot of flat-screen TVs. What we're really seeing is an erosion of standards of living for an enormous portion of the population, including a substantial segment of the once solid middle class.

Not only is this not being addressed, but the self-serving, rightward lurch in Washington is all but guaranteed to make matters worse for working people. The zealots reading the economic tea leaves see brighter days ahead. They can afford to be sanguine. They're working.

While much condemnation has rightly been expressed toward Arizona's anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, a less-reported and potentially more sinister measure is set to take effect on January 1, 2011. This new law, which was passed by the conservative state legislature at the behest of then-School Superintendent (and now Attorney General-elect) Tom Horne, is designated HB 2281 and is colloquially referred to as a measure to ban ethnic studies programs in the state. As with SB 1070, the implications of this law are problematic, wide-ranging and decidedly hate filled.

Whereas SB 1070 focused primarily on the ostensible control of bodies, HB 2281 is predominantly about controlling minds. In this sense, it is the software counterpart of Arizona's race-based politicking, paired with the hardware embodied in SB 1070's "show us your papers" logic of "attrition through enforcement," which has already resulted in tens of thousands of people leaving the state. With HB 2281, the intention is not so much to expel or harass as it is to inculcate a deep-seated, second-class status by denying people the right to explore their own histories and cultures. It is, in effect, about the eradication of ethnic identity among young people in the state's already-floundering school system, which now ranks near the bottom in the nation.

There's a word for what Arizona is attempting to do here: ethnocide. It is similar to genocide in its scope, but it reflects the notion that it is an ethnic and/or cultural identity under assault more so than physical bodies themselves. By imposing a curriculum that forbids the exploration of divergent cultures while propping up the dominant one, there's another process at work here, what we might call ethnonormativity. This takes the teachings of one culture - the colonizer's - and makes it the standard version of history while literally banning other accounts, turning the master narrative into the "normal" one, and further denigrating marginalized perspectives. America's racialized past abounds with such examples of oppressed people being denied their languages, histories and cultures, including through enforced indoctrination in school systems.

As if to add insult to injury, HB 2281 barely makes a pretense to hide any of this in its language and intended scope. A close reading of the law lays bare some of the more stark and sinister aspects of its potential application in a state where Hispanic students fill nearly half the seats in the public schools (the domain to which HB 2281 will apply). In particular, there are three primary aspects of the law that merit further investigation as contributing factors to the ongoing erasure of ethnic identities and the further marginalization of people of color in Arizona.

First, there is the perverse Declaration of Policy preamble, in which the legislature expresses its intention that pupils "should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals," and likewise, "not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people." The irony here is palpable, since SB 1070 precisely singles out "races or classes of people" in its coded language, requiring police to demand legal papers from anyone who is deemed "reasonably suspicious" of being undocumented - which, in the Southwest, obviously correlates with skin color and ethnic origin. Moreover, HB 2281 itself was aimed specifically at abolishing the Raza studies program in Tucson (as well as all ethnic studies programs statewide), which translates literally to "race" as noted in the working definition adopted by the program at San Francisco State University:

"The term Raza literally means race or colloquially, the people. The term figuratively has reference to the Spanish conquest of the indigenous Indians of Mexico and the resulting mestizaje or the mixed racial and ethnic identity of indigenous, European and African heritage unique to the Americas. In practical usage, the term Raza refers to mestizos or mixed peoples; we have the blood of the conquered and conqueror, indigenous, (i.e., Aztec, Mayan, Olmec, Yaqui, Zapotec and numerous other Native Americans), European, African and Asian. The term Raza was popularized by Mexican educator, Jose Vasconcellos who wrote about La Raza Cosmica to inclusively refer to a new 'race' of people born out of the neo-Columbian New World."

In this sense, we come to perceive the aim of banning ethnic studies as an attempt to single out the histories and cultures of certain people based expressly on race and class. While the Arizona legislature states its intention to prevent resentment and hatred of others, the new law fosters precisely that and, in denying people their histories, further encourages self-hatred as well. Indeed, people kept from knowing where they come from have a difficult time knowing where they are going, creating a self-fulfilling downward spiral that is common where people are categorized and labeled as "other" and/or "lesser" vis-à-vis the dominant norm. As such, we see that HB 2281 actually violates its own provisions by promoting that which it claims to eliminate.

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The second critical aspect concerns the law's main prohibitions against any education programs that (1) "promote the overthrow of the United States government," (2) "promote resentment toward a race or class of people," (3) "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group" and (4) "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." The problems here are manifest, starting with the reflexively implicit link to terrorism contained in the first provision - as if to say that ethnic solidarity is somehow akin to attempting to overthrow the government. The third provision is even more problematic in its potential implications, since a plausible argument can be made that the entire mainstream public education curriculum is precisely designed for pupils of a particular ethnic group - namely the dominant, white, Eurocentric group that defines its history and worldview as the "normal" or "standard" ones against which subaltern perspectives are to be judged as deviant and, under HB 2281, banned.

The fourth provision does double duty in prioritizing individualism over group-centric processes, reflecting another deeply-rooted cultural bias and projecting it back as the norm. The libertarian and individualistic foundations of Western culture are viewed as iconic in Arizona, and it is no coincidence that the more communitarian impulses of Raza peoples are denigrated as politically dangerous and pedagogically bereft. Again, the worldview of the oppressor is normalized in its rugged individualism and attempts to break down any movement toward solidarity and unified action among people of the disfavored class. This also expresses contemptuous judgment toward solidarity-based movements grown in the Western world, including the rise of union organizing, anti-globalization and antiwar activism and the mobilizations of people against totalitarianism in the Eastern bloc nations. What the Arizona legislature completely fails to grasp is that individual identity arises out of cultural consciousness - in other words, that it is ethnic solidarity in itself that provides people with the grounding necessary to know who they are as individuals.

Finally, HB 2281 contains an exemption for teaching students about episodes such as the Holocaust; genocides; and "the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on ethnicity, race, or class." In essence, combined with the provisions noted above, this means that students of a particular group can be taught about their history of subjugation, but not about their spirit of solidarity; they can focus on their decimation, but not their emancipation. This sinister portion of the bill strives to reinforce pain at the expense of pride, encouraging young people to internalize the oppression delivered by the dominant culture and make it part of their self-consciousness as "other" in a world whose norms are built on the inherent superiority of the master class. Thus, the law seeks not only to prevent the teaching of histories and values that might empower marginalized people, but further endorses the transmission of destructive episodes and ideologies that can only serve to increase the group's collective disempowerment.

In all of these ways, HB 2281 is a potent example of legislative bigotry and open persecution of people based on factors such as race and class. As with SB 1070, HB 2281 is also self-violating in that it promotes precisely what it claims to prohibit, namely, ethnic chauvinism and "resentment toward a race or class of people." Both of these laws - as well as similar ones in the offing being considered by the Arizona legislature - are entirely counterproductive and manifestly unjust. Confronting similar patterns of legislated intolerance and the widespread attempt to reduce a category of people to second-class status based primarily on ethnic origin, Martin Luther King Jr. famously wrote in his landmark essay "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," following the teachings of St. Augustine, that "an unjust law is no law at all." King further reminds us, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," calling upon us to recognize the interlinked nature of destinies and, indeed, the inherent solidarity of our struggles, and further counsels that in this effort "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

Carrying the logic further, King articulates a framework for resistance that applies as much in Arizona today as it did in the South during the Jim Crow era:

"Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an 'I it' relationship for an 'I thou' relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful.... An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey, but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal.... A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that ... had no part in enacting or devising the law.... We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was 'illegal.'"

By denying marginalized peoples their own stories and understandings, HB 2281 likewise denies the "conquerors" the capacity to come to terms with the full implications of history, thus, literally enabling the perpetuation of a state of "denial" that inhibits the development of necessary processes of atonement, accountability and reconciliation. As with laws associated with segregationist and tyrannical regimes throughout history, HB 2281 and SB 1070 are inherently unjust and, hence, are "no laws at all." They must be disobeyed, not out of spite or hatred, but more so to uplift the oppressors and the oppressed alike, as Paulo Freire has suggested. In this sense, solidarity transcends its narrow bounds and the struggle itself is our finest education.

FORT PIERCE, Fla. - For the three generations of the Maggi family crowded into a recession-beaten three-bedroom ranch house here, the tension from living on top of one another for the last 10 months sometimes erupts at unexpected moments.

A nudge from Kathy Maggi for her 26-year-old daughter, Holly, to clean her room sparks a blow-up; an offhand comment by Jim Maggi about the way bills come in "month after month" to his daughter's fiancé, James Wilson, causes days of smoldering; a bite of a chocolate bar from Grandma to 21-month-old Madison leads to frustrated chatter behind closed doors about "Nana" and "Pawpaw" spoiling her.

In February, after being evicted from their Gainesville apartment, Holly, James, Madison and their good-natured pit bull, Caley, moved into a cramped bedroom in the house where Holly grew up. Neither of Madison's parents had been able to find work for more than a year.

Of the myriad ways the Great Recession has altered the country's social fabric, the surge in households like the Maggis', where relatives and friends have moved in together as a last resort, is one of the most concrete, yet underexplored, demographic shifts.

Census Bureau data released in September showed that the number of multifamily households jumped 11.7 percent from 2008 to 2010, reaching 15.5 million, or 13.2 percent of all households. It is the highest proportion since at least 1968, accounting for 54 million people.

Even that figure, however, is undoubtedly an undercount of the phenomenon social service providers call "doubling up," which has ballooned in the recession and anemic recovery. The census' multifamily household figures, for example, do not include such situations as when a single brother and a single sister move in together, or when a childless adult goes to live with his or her parents.

For many, the arrangements represent their last best option, the only way to stave off entering a homeless shelter or sleeping in their cars. In fact, nearly half of the people in shelters in 2009 who had not previously been homeless had been staying with family members or friends, according to a recent report, making clear that the arrangements are frequently a final way station on the way to homelessness.

A New York Times analysis of census "microdata," prepared by the University of Minnesota's state population center, found that the average income of multifamily households in the records fell by more than 5 percent from 2009 to 2010, twice as much as households over all, suggesting that many who are living in such arrangements are under financial siege.

Holly's parents had been enduring their own financial struggles. Mr. Maggi, 58, lost his job as a high-end furniture maker in early 2009. Complicating matters, he and his wife had allowed Holly's older sister, her husband and their two children to move in with them after they lost their home to foreclosure in 2008. They finally scraped together the money to move out just a week before Holly arrived with her family.

Nevertheless, the Maggis said there was never any question about their taking in Holly and her young family.

"She didn't have any other options," said Kathy Maggi, 53, who has not worked for several years because of health problems. "It was here or on the streets."

Back in Gainesville, Holly Maggi had worked as a manager at a self-storage facility before being laid off in 2007. She eventually took a job at a Häagen-Dazs, only to lose that as well. Mr. Wilson's job as a flooring contractor sustained them, until that work also dried up in early 2009.

As their money dwindled, Ms. Maggi and Mr. Wilson looked into shelters but discovered they would not be able to stay together as a family. It took Ms. Maggi a week to muster up the courage to ask her parents.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," said Ms. Maggi, who has lived on her own since she was 18, working for most of that time and putting herself through community college.

The young couple, however, have come to regret their decision, even as they concede they had no other choice.

"I liked her family when we weren't here," said Mr. Wilson, who has struggled to mesh his more reserved personality with the garrulousness of Ms. Maggi's family. "Now that we're here, I don't like them. I feel bad about it. I don't think it's their problem, or something that can be helped. It is what it is."

The stresses can be as trifling as having to worry when getting up at night to use the toilet, which Mr. Wilson said he fretted about all the time because the elder Maggis' bedroom is next to the bathroom. Or they can be more serious, like how Mr. Wilson and Ms. Maggi feel their parental decisions are being constantly undermined by her parents.

Several months ago, Holly Maggi finally landed a part-time job, paying minimum wage, as a cashier at Harvest Food & Outreach Center here, which offers discounted groceries, classes and other services to the needy. (The center's client base has grown tenfold this year in St. Lucie County, where the unemployment rate was 15.2 percent in November.)

With Ms. Maggi at work, Mr. Wilson, 26, has been left to fend for himself at home with their daughter and Ms. Maggi's parents. Over time, Kathy Maggi's regular chirping about how to deal with Madison and her sometimes-differing approach - she prefers, for example, not to let her granddaughter cry, even though Mr. Wilson and Holly Maggi sometimes think she needs to - has rankled Mr. Wilson. "I don't think she feels Madison is safe when she's with me," he said.

After Holly comes home from work, the couple spend most of their time in their bedroom, with Madison dashing in and out. Most of their possessions, including a 75-gallon fish tank with two giant South American cichlids and a South American catfish, occupy a second bedroom. Even though three-quarters of the space in their room is taken up by a king-size mattress, it has become their refuge. "This is the only place we feel we have that's really ours," Holly Maggi said.

The family's time together has not been without its joys. It has enabled Madison's grandparents to witness her first steps and first words, her transformation from infant to toddler. But the financial burdens shadow everything.

The sharing of expenses is a touchy subject. Holly's food stamps cover groceries, but she and Mr. Wilson only occasionally pitch in on other bills because they have been focused on paying off creditors, as well as friends and relatives who have lent them money. Her parents have dropped hints but hold back. "That's her money," Kathy Maggi said. "I can't say, 'Holly, give me your paycheck for the bills.' I can't do that."

The young couple's relationship has suffered. Arguments are more frequent. Their sex life, they say, is basically nonexistent. Every night, with her parents in the next room, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Maggi discuss in hushed tones how and when they might be able to move out. Their hopes were buoyed recently when she was promoted and got a small raise.

The new dilemma, however, is that Jim Maggi's unemployment benefits are scheduled to run out soon, which would leave the elder Maggis with no income and their savings exhausted. Mr. Maggi declared recently they needed to have a family meeting.

The predicament has left Holly Maggi feeling torn. She wants to leave, maybe even needs to, but she also does not want to abandon her parents. Soon, she will have to make a decision.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. home foreclosures jumped in the third quarter and banks' efforts to keep borrowers in their homes dropped as the housing market continues to struggle, U.S. bank regulators said on Wednesday.

The regulators said one reason for the increase in foreclosures is that banks have "exhausted" options for keeping many delinquent borrowers in their homes through programs such as loan modifications.

Newly-initiated foreclosures increased to 382,000 in the third quarter, a 31.2 percent jump over the previous quarter and a 3.7 percent rise from the same quarter a year ago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) said in a quarterly mortgage report.

The number of foreclosures in process increased to 1.2 million, a 4.5 percent increase from the second quarter and a 10.1 percent increase from a year ago, according to the regulators.

They said during a briefing that the numbers could send "mixed signals" about the health of the U.S. housing market.

Regulators also said a possible reason for the foreclosure uptick in the quarter was that a large pool of borrowers who were being considered for home retention programs but did not qualify moved through the system.

"I think you'll see more stabilization now," said Bruce Krueger, a mortgage official at the OCC.

Foreclosures have become a hot political topic and mortgage servicers have come under fire in recent months amid accusations they did not properly review documents before attempting to take borrowers' homes.

These concerns prompted the country's 50 state attorneys general to coordinate an investigation of lenders such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Ally Financial's GMAC unit.

Some banks, including BofA, temporarily suspended foreclosure proceedings late in the third quarter to review procedures.

Officials from the OCC and OTS declined to say what type of impact this might have on fourth-quarter foreclosure numbers.

BANKS LOOK OUTSIDE HAMP

State attorneys general and regulators have been pushing banks to perform more loan modifications and the report shows these efforts have had mixed results.

Overall home retention actions taken by banks dropped by 17 percent compared to the second quarter, but most of that was due to decreases in the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), the Obama administration's leading foreclosure prevention effort.

In the third quarter, HAMP loan modifications slid by almost 46 percent, according to the report.

Regulators said the drop in HAMP modifications is likely due to a few factors, including that a large pool of borrowers who were being considered for the program turned out not to be eligible once their qualifications were fully reviewed.

Treasury launched HAMP to try to find a way to reduce mortgage payments for struggling homeowners who wanted to keep their homes but who were at imminent risk of foreclosure.

But it is widely regarded as a flawed program, and the incoming Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Representative Darrell Issa, has called for it to be ended.

Regulators pointed out that mortgage servicers are pursuing more modifications outside of HAMP and such efforts increased by 10 percent in the third quarter.

The report, which covers 33 million loans serviced by national banks and federally regulated thrifts, shows that the amount of borrowers making their mortgage payments on time remains steady at 87.4 percent.

The amount of seriously delinquent loans, those 60 days or more past due, dropped 6.4 percent from the second quarter. The amount of loans that were 30 to 59 days past due, however, increased 4.3 percent.

Dear family members, friends and supporters of the Lucasville uprising prisoners,

Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Bomani Shakur (Keith LaMar), Jason Robb and Namir Mateen (James Were) will start a hunger strike on Monday Jan. 3 to protest their 23-hour a day lock down for nearly 18 years. These four death-sentenced prisoners have been single-celled (in solitary) in conditions of confinement significantly more severe than the conditions experienced by the approximately 125 other death-sentenced prisoners at the supermax prison, Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. They are completely isolated from any direct human contact, even during "recreation". They are restricted from certain kinds of good ordering including gold weather items for the almost unbearably cold condtions in the cells. They are denied access to computer databases they need in order to prepare their appeals. It has been made clear to them that the outcome of their annual "security level reviews" is pretermined, as one reads, "...regardless of your behavior while confined at OSP."Prisoners whose death sentences were for heinous crimes are able to win privileges based on good behavior, but not the death-sentenced Lucasville uprising prisoners.

Meanwhile out in the world, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted additional due process rights to some of the Gauantanamo prisoners, some death-sentenced prisoners have been exonerated or had their sentences commuted, an evidentiary hearing was ordered for Troy Anthony Davis, and prisoners in Georgia are engaging in a non-violent strike for improvements in a wide range of conditions. So the four death-sentenced Lucasville uprising prinsoners have decided that being punished by the worst conditions allowable under the law has gone far enough, especially since their convictions were based on perjured testimony. They are innocent! They were wrongfully convicted! They are political prisoners. This farce has gone on far too long and their executions loom in the not too distant future. These brave men are ready to take another stand. We ask that you get ready to support them.

The hunger strike will proceed in an organized manner, with one prisoner, probably Bomani Shakur starting on Jan.3. The hunger strike becomes official after he has refused 9 meals. Therefore the plan is that 3 days later, Siddiquie Abdullah Hasan will start his hunger strike and 3 days later, Jason Robb will follow. Namir Mateen has a great willingness to participate and plans to take part to the extent that his diabetes will allow.

On the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Saturday, Jan. 15, we will be holding a press conference about the hunger strike and other issues pertaining to Ohio State Penitentiary. Details of time and location are being worked out. There will very likely be a brief rally near the gates of OSP, as we have in previous years to honor Dr. King, to protest the death penalty and to protest the farce of the Lucasville uprising convictions. There will probably be one or more vans and/or a car caravan to OSP for the event. Stay tuned for more information.

Please forward this email to other people you think would be interested, here in Ohio, around the country and around the world.

17) Mississippi: Kidney Is the Cost of FreedomBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESSDecember 29, 2010http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/30brfs-KIDNEYISTHEC_BRF.html?ref=us

For 16 years, sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott have shared a life behind bars for their part in an $11 armed robbery. To share freedom, they must also share a kidney. Gov. Haley Barbour suspended the sisters' life sentences on Wednesday, but 36-year-old Gladys Scott's release is contingent on her giving a kidney to Jamie, 38, who requires daily dialysis. The sisters were convicted in 1994 of leading two men into an ambush in central Mississippi the year before. Civil rights advocates have for years called for their release, saying the sentences were excessive.